Played By a Kindergartner

I think I've mentioned that I work with kindergartners... all day long. Then have to deal with my two for the rest of the day. Feel my pain?
We have a rule that after a warning or two and a student continues to break a rule then he or she has to go to the behavior chart and pull a stick- then a note goes home. Well a little boy pulled a stick for not listening (go figure). Thirty minutes later he is crying during a movie. I called him over to my desk and he cried on my lap. Forgetting about the stick earlier I ask,
"What's wrong sweetie?"
And in between sobs he tells me that he missed his mom and she's gone. Well we have a lot of military students at our school and in our class. So I allow him time to cry on my lap, gave him a hug and explained that she would be back and she still loves him.
"Did she take your brother too?" I asked.
The three previous days, his dad had come to get him after school so I ASSumed she was definitely gone.
I take the car riders outside after school to go home and I see his mom.
"I thought you were gone," I told her.
She was puzzled. So I told her the story.
"Oh when his dad got him the other days I was in the car.
I looked at her son. He wouldn't make eye contact with me.
"We have been having problems with him lieing lately. About pulling sticks in class and some other things at home," she revealed.
"Well he got me. And he pulled a stick today, now that I think about it."