Teasing Trouble

• Giggles and Wiggles
• Two-Tooth To-Do
• Funny and Nice
• Dear Parents

Giggles and Wiggles

One day, Miss Sparks asks the students if anybody has any news for the class. Spencer and Hallie both raise their hands. Miss Sparks calls on Spencer first because he raised his hand first. Spencer says he has a new joke, and he tells a knock knock joke. All the children and Miss Sparks both laugh.

Then, Miss Sparks calls on Hallie. Hallie says her two front teeth are loose. She wiggles her front teeth. Hallie holds up a little pillow with a pocket on it. She explains that when her teeth fall out, she’ll put them in the pillow. She’ll hang it by her bed, and the tooth fairy will come. Miss Sparks says when her teeth fall out, they’ll put her picture in the Tooth Club.

Connor is amazed! Two front teeth loose at once! Hallie wiggles her teeth back and forth for the other students. Spencer stands up and wiggles his ears. Spencer loves to make the children laugh.

At lunch, Spencer comes up to Hallie and says she should eat her sandwich by using the sides of her mouth, like a flute. Hallie giggles and gives it a shot. When Nathan asks her to wiggle her teeth again, Hallie complies. But then, Hallie feels something in her mouth. She looks down to see one of her teeth has come out! She holds it up so everyone can see it. Hallie is officially in the Tooth Club!

Two-Tooth To-Do

After lunch, Spencer suggests the children go outside to play hopscotch. But nobody is paying attention to Spencer, only to Hallie. Everybody keeps asking Hallie if they can see her tooth. So, Hallie shouts for everyone to look at him. He pretends like he’s Hallie pulling out her tooth with two hands. Everyone laughs, and Spencer feels better again.

Just then, Hallie feels something else in her mouth. It’s her other tooth! Where her teeth used to be, Hallie just has a big space in her mouth. Spencer shouts “Hey, everybody! Hallie has a hole in her head!” Some of the children laugh. But Hallie frowns—she doesn’t like Spencer’s joke.

Gwen tells Spencer that his jokes are hurting Hallie’s feelings. He retorts that Hallie doesn’t mind. And Gwen has a hole in her head, too… her nose! Gwen doesn’t laugh, and instead rolls her eyes and walks away. Then, Spencer starts to sing all about Hallie and Gwen with holes in their heads. When only a few children laugh, he thinks maybe they didn’t hear him. So he sings louder. Gwen and Hallie wish Spencer would stop singing, but he continues to sing louder, and louder, and louder.

When the class goes inside, Hallie shows Miss Sparks the two teeth that fell out. She carefully puts them in her pillow, and Miss Sparks puts Hallie’s picture on the Tooth Club board. Miss Sparks puts two stars next to it because she lost two front teeth on the same day! Everyone claps and cheers for Hallie, but Spencer thinks they’re making a big fuss and two-tooth to-do over Hallie’s teeth.

Hallie goes to the art table and draws a picture of a fairy. She glues it on her tooth pillow. She says it’s so the tooth fairy knows where to find her teeth. Everybody smiles—they know Hallie loves fairies. Spencer jokes that the tooth fairy will be mad at her because carrying two teeth at once will be too heavy.

Hallie’s face changes from smiles to frowns. The whole art table frowns. They don’t think Spencer is very funny anymore. Skylar says Spencer shouldn’t tease Hallie about the tooth fairy. Spencer replies that there’s no such thing as the tooth fairy anyway, and only babies believe in the tooth fairy. All the children gasp.

Hallie turns her back to him to ignore him. She goes to talk to Skylar, but with no front teeth, it comes out as “Th-ee, Th-kylar?” Spencer laughs. Now, he’s making fun of how Hallie is talking.

Hallie gets angry. Her face turns red. She tried walking away from Spencer, and he didn’t notice. He followed her and imitated the way she talked. He continues to laugh, so much that he doesn’t notice that nobody else is laughing.

Funny and Nice

At the end of the day, all the children line up to go home. Hallie is holding her tooth pillow. Miss Sparks compliments Hallie’s beautiful fairy tooth pillow. Miss Sparks moves on to the next child.

Spencer doesn’t miss the opportunity to imitate Hallie again, “Thank-th, Mi-th Th-park-th.” Hallie whirls around and yells for him to stop it. He continues, “Th-top it, Th-pen-ther!” Hallie stamps her feet. She’s full of rage. She yells right in his face that she’s tired of his bullying and teasing.

Spencer is shocked. He feels terrible. He didn’t mean to make Hallie angry. He tries to think of something funny to say, but he can’t. He doesn’t feel funny at all.

Miss Sparks hurries over. When she asks what happened, Hallie says that Spencer has been acting like a bully. Spencer feels defensive, and exclaims he’s not a bully! A bully picks on littler people and pinches and punches them. Hallie says he didn’t pinch or punch her, but he hurt her feelings.

Spencer sadly apologizes. He was only joking, after all. Hallie responds that his jokes were funny at first, but then he started to make fun of her, and wouldn’t stop. Miss Sparks asks if Hallie tried to tell Spencer how she was feeling. She shakes her head.

Spencer says next time he’ll stop and think before he jokes. Hallie says next time she’ll speak up right away if someone hurts her feelings. Miss Sparks says she’s proud of them. Words can hurt, but they can also help.

The next day, when Hallie shows up at school, Spencer is waiting at her desk. All the other students watch with anticipation. Spencer apologizes for his behavior. He didn’t stop to think how his jokes might make her feel. He shouldn’t have made fun of her for how she looks or talks. And he shouldn’t have said only babies believe in tooth fairies.

Hallie laughs with all the other children. Spencer is wearing the wings from the dress-up closet! He had a sign on his back that read “Tooth Fairy’s Helper.” He was making fun of himself. And then, he pulls out a shiny yellow toothbrush with a big pink bow. He says he wants to give it to Hallie as a gift.

Hallie smiles… she can’t be mad at Spencer anymore. Spencer flutters his wings. It was nice to be funny, but it’s nicer to be nice.

Dear Parents

Discusses how many children act like both Spencer and Hallie at one time or another. But humor is tricky. What tickles one child’s funny bone may hurt another’s. Discusses how to overcome this. Topics include:

• Playing Read My Face where children are asked to name the emotions people are showing
• Invite your child to help being thoughtful for others
• Giving children chances to praise others, and praising them
• Caring for your child out loud and by expressing empathy towards their emotions
• Talk to children about when jokes are okay, and when they’re not
• It’s not okay to make jokes about peoples’ appearance, actions, or speech
• Encourage children to apologize when they make mistakes
• Teach children three steps for dealing with words or actions they don’t like
  • Count to five before saying anything back
  • Look the other child in the eye and say “Please stop!”
  • Walk away
• Use “I feel…” messages such as “I feel angry when you call me ‘four eyes'”
• Encourage children to ask the other person to stop bullying them three times before asking an adult for help
• Stand up for friends