Kindergarten has been a fairly tough transition for our six year old. He’s not someone well suited to institutionalization, and his natural flair for practical jokes is not quite as appreciated in school as it is outside of the classroom.

His teacher (just like last year’s teacher) uses a stoplight system. This is a giant stoplight made out of construction paper. Each kid had a clothespin with their name on it. At the beginning of the day, all the clothespins are on the green light. When they act up, they have to move their clothespin to yellow. Act up enough and you end up on red.

This year’s teacher has added more colors to her stoplight. In addition to green, there’s an orange and two reds. Each color has a corresponding punishment. Yellow is a warning, Orange is a time out, and so on.

The big guy has had his share of “non-green” days, but the low point came one day when I was trying to get him to talk about his day. He doesn’t like to talk about what happens at school, so I always ask about recess. He’s good with talking about recess.

On this particular day, I noticed that he always seemed to play with the same set of friends on the playground. I asked about some of the other kids, kids that he knows from outside of school, and played with this past summer.

His answer? “Well, I stay with the yellow kids.”

Ouch.