So little she-who-is refused to say the pledge of allegiance in preschool today.

She'd been having a very off morning, and the teacher, a very gentle and sweet person, apparently "told her that I [the teacher] might need to talk to her mother [me] about it and she decided to cooperate."

My thoughts, in approximate chronological order:

• Whoa, they're learning the pledge in preschool?
  
  
• Don't use me as the stick. I'm gonna back the girl up! My daughter's a hellraiser! beaming
  
  
• Hold on, mom, call off the ACLU, she's not Refusing to Say the Pledge, she's just a little short on sleep and feeling a bit sensitive and hasseled these days. (She's cried at dropoff the last couple days, one of those things where she's fine five minutes later.)
  
  
• Yabbut, there's this "I'll talk to your mom and get you to comply" thing that I don't like.
  
  
• But the teacher reported it in a very lighthearted way, I can't imagine her being heavy-handed about it--she seemed bemused about the whole thing and mentioned it almost as an afterthought.
  
  
• It's good that C learns the pledge. It's a part of our civic life, however she ends up feeling about it.

Then my head exploded.


The preschool is here at the church, and I'm actually on their staff because I lead chapel for the kids a couple of times a month. So it could have been one of those cajoling things ("should I talk to your mom about it?") because the teacher sees me regularly. I can't imagine she'd call a parent over this.

If it was a lighthearted toss-off comment, not meant to be taken seriously, then I'm OK with it, really. However, we have a lot of military folk in this area and the issues around patriotism continue to confound me a bit. As a friend asked, would she have acted the same way if C had refused to sing "I'm a Little Teapot"? If it was lighthearted, then maybe.

As a child I was always SO good and compliant, to the point of doing things I really didn't enjoy just because I was good at them and adults asked me to. (Don't get me started once again on the panic-inducing horror that was the spelling bee.) C has a similar temperament. So I'm trying to find the balance between advocating for her right to decline, and even to rebel sometimes, while not working out all my issues through her.