The Handshake / der Händedruck

One of the interesting rituals at Nikolas' school is the hello and goodbye handshake. It is an Austrian custom to shake hands when you see a colleague or acquaintance or friend - both hello and good-bye. Children are trained from early on how to shake hands and make eye contact and say hello or good bye, and each child at Nikolas' school is greeted in the morning with a handshake and is bid farewell at the end of the day with a handshake.

The first couple days when a teacher stuck out her hand to Nikolas, he slapped it, thinking he was supposed to do a 'high five'. After all, what do we teach our children to do in the US when someone sticks out their hand? We talked to Nikolas about the handshake versus the high five and even practiced how to shake hands and look at the person and the appropriate greeting (in German, of course). Since then, he's wanted nothing to do with the handshake. Instead, he has taken to hiding behind one of us to avoid the whole scene.

Until today. Today Nikolas was ready to leave, and was almost out the door when we reminded him that he should shake the teacher's hand. There were kids running around us in total stir-crazy mayhem with the third cool and cloudy and wet school day in a row. One teacher was prying a boy named Denny off the top of a row of coat cubbies and another was herding a wandering group of shoeless boys into another classroom.

"Oh yeah," Nikolas said and turned around. He walked up to the teacher doing the herding, stuck out his hand, smiled at her, and said, "Tschüß!"