Pecking Order

There is a yearly phenomenon (occurrence) in grade school and high school. An eighth grader is finally at the top of the heap, king of the hill, top dog and no longer the little kid in school. “I am somebody!” as Jesse J. would say. The same is true for seniors in high school. But then, reality sets in the following school year and you start all over at the bottom. While I have seen this for years with my children and others as they went from junior high to high school and high school to college, it was brought up again at a new level in my current job.

I work with these wonderful little kids who range from infancy to three years old. They are in age groups of infant, wobbler, toddler and transition. The toddlers and transition kids are just like the eighth graders and high school seniors. They finally get to the status of top dog and then one day, they start all over in the next class room.

I remember eighth graders being real butt heads when I was in seventh grade. Of course, when my class became the eighth graders we were wonderful human beings. We didn’t pick on the younger kids nor do anything mean to them, unlike the classes before us.

With the toddlers, and this holds true for the transition kids, the older kids are very much into pushing and shoving and taking toys and attention away from the younger kids. But there is a God and this June, three of the toddlers reached the ripe old age of two and moved up to the transition class. Back to the bottom of the pile they go.

What I enjoyed about this discovery of the cyclical pecking order was listening to the teachers as they analyzed the kids last week while we were watching them on the playground. It was a consensus that a particular child was ready to move up and that doing so would put him in his place. There is another child who is already in the older class and she will be put in her place because of a younger child moving up. Already the class dynamics have changed. The cliques and groupings are different at two and three years old. It is not surprising then, that as kids enter junior high and high school that they are well versed in the art of taking charge.