"It's Great!"

That's Princess E's analysis of kindergarten. In her first three days, she's already gotten her first homework, had Spanish, computer and sign language classes and learned that dawdling over her lunch (she's a notoriously slow eater) means that she won't get to eat everything in her lunch box.

And, she's also been laughed at.

She told a "secret" to one of her friends (it involved a, shall we say, bathroom problem), and that friend - being a five-year-old - immediately told everyone in their seven-person kindergarten class. Of course, at that age anything to do with bathroom habits are funny, and they all started laughing at her - which broke her oh-so-sensitive little heart.

Does it make me a bad person if I want to go wring the necks of a bunch of five-year-olds?

The teacher dealt with it well, and the Princess and I had a talk about 1) sharing "secrets," 2) the dos and don'ts (or the who's and who nots) of sharing personal information, and 3) that you can really make a person feel bad by laughing at them. As much as I hated to see the sadness in her eyes, maybe there was an underlying reason from the Big Guy for the whole incident. Maybe He just wanted her to learn compassion and respect and integrity early on, in a way that would imprint on her heart so that she'd never forget it.

And maybe the Big Guy wanted to teach me a lesson early on, too. That I can't protect her from the big bad world anymore, but I can be there to pick up the pieces afterward, cuddle her on my lap, and reassure her that at least one person in the world knows she's one fantastic kid.

Gosh, kindergarten is hard.