A little of this and a little of that...

Your moment of zen is in:


This little rat curled herself up atop a flower pot. She's going through her terrible teens.

One minute it's "I want out," the next it's "I want in." One minute I'm her best friend, the next she's cavorting among the night life for 12 hours.

"Little miss" I say, "do you think it's acceptable to stay out half the night and not check in?"

To which I get an I-could-care-less drawn out "meeoooooow" proceeded by the walk-away as a reply.

The nerve.

Unruly kids, what are you going to do with them?

I have a kid at college that shows up, pretends he's not there, fiddles with his cell and, with the biggest smile on his face, promises me that he'll have his work in by next week.

And he is the talk of the school meetings. It is so unusual for that to happen in a Japanese classroom that it's like this kid is the oil in a classroom full of water.

Sometimes I have to giggle and tell myself: Relax, he's not that bad, he's just different.

At the same time, half way around the world in North American cultures kids misbehaviors run the gamut in school settings.

Last Fall, I sat in a lower level English class at my public high school. I was taken aback by the disrespect and unruliness of a select few. When the teacher, my close friend, disciplined them, I could tell she was used to doing what she was doing. She reprimanded them with an almost lack of conviction.

When I discipline in class, I react as if hell has frozen over.

"Whose cell phone was that?" I say like a deer in the headlights, trying to identify where the musical tune is coming from. 'Wait, this has never happened before,' I think to myself, 'what do I do?'

Ha ha, of course I don't do that. Don't be gullible, even Japanese kids aren't that well-behaved.

And to ever-so clichely - not a word though anything goes on your own blog - "end on a positive note" let's remember that "the good," most often then not, "outweighs the bad."

Cheeziness aside, no matter what classroom you are sitting at in the world, there are always heaps of pleasant students and very few misbehavior-is-my-middle-name students.

What do you think?

The unruly child taking a break for coziness.