Thursday, October 11, 2007

Pass le Tomate

My youngest's teacher wanted to see me this evening. From the look on my son's face I guessed something was up. It seems that a mother had complained that some children were playing a game called 'la Tomate' in the playground last Tuesday, and that my son was implicated.

I had no idea what she was talking about so she told me about the game, sometimes called le jeu du foulard, rêve indien or rêve bleu. It amounts to a game of asphyxiation where the kids hold their breath or strangle themselves until they go red (hence tomato). My son is 6!

She told me as much as she knew, said that she had talked to my son and that she hoped he now understood the dangers and would do it no more. I hope so, because 15 children have died from this game since Jan 2006. It's a very widespread game - a million and a half kids have tried it - which is pretty worrying.

I talked to my son once we got home too. He's not exactly Mr Communicative, but I just about managed to discern what had gone on although he maintains he can't remember who he played it with! From Tuesday! I sometimes wonder about his memory...

His teacher did say that apart from this incident, he is a joy to have in the class, is a very intelligent lad and has a fantastic general culture which surprises me greatly as he never seems to be paying attention to anything much. Just goes to show really! She also said that he goes right to the edge of acceptable behaviour, which I know about. My mother calls him The Barbarian after, at the age of 2, he head-butted her poorly knee opening up a recently healed wound, and my ex-h had to do emergency surgery on the bed and put in a drain. She's never forgotten that...

I'm kinda dreading his adolescence...

2 comments:

  1. First comment she seems to be a jolly good teacher, coz that jeu du foulard is such a dealy thing, and usually they don't talk to anyone about it, so you don't know. Also, after such a short time in his class she certainly knows him....

    Limit behaviour - true from time to time - but when you settle down to ask him "why"...he frankly says why...and that seems jolly healthy too. If he can say why he's being limit....then his relational problems in life won't be to serious....dialogue being the best ever solution to upset and stress and misunderstandings!........as long as you are all speaking the same language...of course.

    ReplyDelete
  2. coincidence, we had some cases of the same games last week - the teachers had an emergency meeting and there was a note in the cahier de correspondance followed by discussions in each class... which of course gave ideas to some...

    ReplyDelete

Comments are bienvenue.