Today was an interesting day of parenting mishaps. I am not going to say failures because each time we learn from what happens and we try our best to correct things. Let’s start with the morning. For the weeks leading up to the release of Wonder Woman I have been excited, very excited. I was excited not so much for the movie but because Eva wanted to go and see it with me. I picked her up a great Wonder Woman shirt and she had Allison do up her hair in curls. She was excited to attend a movie with Dad. I was thrilled because this was something that I enjoyed and she wanted to be a part of it. I also heard so much about the movie being empowering for girls and how Wonder Woman’s character was a great role model character.

These things are true. The thing that made this trip go sideways was the fact that my daughter is an extremely sensitive and compassionate person. The previews were for some R rated shoot em up movies, a global devastation movie and Murder on the Orient Express. She huddled in her chair afraid of the loud noises and music. Eyes closed and ears plugged. I reassured her that the previews would be over soon and we would get to the movie and it wouldn’t be as scary.

I was wrong.

I’m very desensitized to the violence found in movies and TV. The violence in Wonder Woman was very tame compared to things I watch on TV like Arrow, another DC property. During a fight scene Antiope, played by Robin Wright, is knocked away by the power of Wonder Woman’s gauntlets and she hits the ground. Another amazon tells her that she is bleeding but we see no blood. There is virtually no blood at all see in the fight between the Nazis and Amazons. The problem is that there was this fight and people died on both sides. Eva was really upset about it. We stayed a little longer and there as another character with a jacked up face and she was experimenting with Mustard gas. That was actually pretty terrifying.

I asked her if she wanted to leave. She said yes and we made our way outside. I should have asked her much sooner. I am proud of her for having the courage to tell me that she wanted to leave despite knowing that I really wanted to see the movie. We went to the lobby and I talked with the front box office. I was polite and soft-spoken. I explained our situation and asked if there was anything they could do like let us watch the end of another movie or something. they were great about it and let us get our money refunded. I didn’t really care about the money and would have been fine even if we received no refund. I was more upset with myself for not asking Eva if she wanted to leave sooner.

We got outside and into the car. I had a serious talk with her about what happened. I told her how proud I was that she is a sensitive and compassionate person. I asked her if what I suspected bothered her in fact did bother her. I was right. She has never seen a TV show or movie where people have been killed in a fight, again this was tame, there was no blood but characters were shot with guns and arrows. She told me that she felt bad because it was a movie that I wanted to see. I told her that it was more important to me that she told me that she wanted to go even though it was something I wanted to see. We had a good talk together and then went for lunch instead. We had a good conversation and a plate of buffalo wings to enjoy.

Eva created this during the afternoon.

In the afternoon Andrew had his karate graduation. Now, he has been out of sorts for two days because he he has Strep. He was more himself and had no fever today so we took him to the graduation. We felt that it was important to be a part of it because the ceremony is an important part of this. Karate has been hit or miss with Andrew. Some classes he is great and pays attention. Other times he is a goof. He’s not mean or deliberately disrespectful, he’s just always trying to make people laugh.

He did well for much of the ceremony. This was a huge graduation with 3 full schools together. It was packed and it was hot.

At the very end of the ceremony all the kids were around the mat to watch the demonstration team. There was not much room for all these kids and I guess Andrew had no room and this other boy would not give him space. He (Andrew) kept bumping the boy to get space. The boy kept laughing at Andrew. Andrew has had problems with this boy before. I don’t know what happened to make the next part occur but the next thing I see is Andrew wrapping his belt around the boys neck and pulling him back. At this point in the ceremony the parents are invited to go up and participate with the kids. I came up to where I find Andrew crying because some of the stripes on his belt has been almost pulled off. Andrew was so upset. I really don’t know exactly what transpired because there were so many kids that I could not keep him in view the entire time. Then I couldn’t get the whole story out of him because he is 5 1/2 and only tells you half the story and not at all in sequence.

Between Allison and I we reinforced how important it is not for him to do anything like that again to another kid, even if the kid is taunting him. We also are disciplining him because of it.

Something like this makes us doubt the choice of having him go to the graduation especially when he wasn’t 100%. When I got to him he was so, so sweaty. Unfortunately for him he takes after me. In the sweat department and in the no taking shit from people and snapping department. I’ll talk more to him tomorrow because I had to run right from there to work. Allison already has and set up his discipline, no tablet, no TV for a few days, but I still want to chat with him a bit. I’d really like to know what pushed him that far.