I've settled on my reaction, for now. I found out him he doesn't hate the language arts as much as he'd just rather the pre-k (by asking if he still wanted to go to the harder class if he couldn't go to pre-k). I've told my son, "both classes are part of going to school. quit complaining and trying to talk your teacher out of going to your second class".
I told him "I'll make a deal with you. I'll give you 1 month of cards and you can circle smiley face, question mark, or frown for class # 1 and class #2. At the end of the month we'll look at them and decide if you like either class. If not you don't have to go. If so, you keep going. It doesn't matter. But, you can't complain. You can't say, "I don't like this class" or "I don't like this work". Or the deal's off. You can say, "I don't know if I like yet" or "I don't know if I like this homework yet."
Thanks for helping me work through my thoughts on this.
