Yesterday was Monkey’s very first day of kindergarten. In some ways this was not a big deal because, really? We’ve put our precious boy into the hands of total strangers twice before ((The third year of pre-school he had the same teacher and therapists as his second year which was nice.)). I’m an old pro at sending my child off into a feared nest of vipers only to learn that my fears were out-sized and overwrought. I’m an old pro at overwrought.
In other ways this was very, very new and scary. I doubt I’ll ever get over that ache in my heart and that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I take his little hand from mine and press it into his teacher’s hand. I doubt I’ll ever be able to turn and walk away from him, leaving him uncertain, worried and in the care of people I haven’t yet learned to trust, without my throat tightening and my eyes burning. I doubt I will ever be able to get in my truck and drive away feeling anything less than dread.
Fortunately, yesterday, I had a fantastic distraction in the form of a friend and her mom. We toured the city, talked and laughed which spared me a day of hand-wringing and aborted calls to the school to check on him. A while after lunch I finally got the call from Duhdee that Monkey had had an awesome day. He even brought home a couple tentative art projects which showed he wasn’t completely shut down. We have a weekend to recoup now and we’ll get started on all the real work on Monday. We can do this.
Who am I kidding? HE can do this. I just need to stand next to him and keep knocking down the roadblocks so he can.
Yay! I hope the second day dropoff went just as well. We put Saul on a bus to school for the first time today. I had to drag him on but he smiled and waved goodbye once he was buckled into his car seat. He’s going back to the same room and teachers so that’s nice. Of course he has picked up Monkey’s sleep habits the last few nights. He was up like 2:30-5:30 Friday night and last night. The totally awake in the middle of the night thing. Today he’s in school until 2:30 and he’s used to napping at 1 ish so who knows what will happen. Hopefully his sleep will settle back down.
Ugh, ugh, ugh! Sorry to hear about the sleep. We need to discuss the whole meds thing with the Dr. again because this pattern seems to be a few days on/a few days off. I think he finally sleeps through because he’s exhausted from not sleeping. It’s tough.
We are working towards the bus but with all the new people we want to be sure he’s doing OK there first. We already have a list of things we want to ask them about and discuss…of course.
Today was not great. They were trying to force eye contact upon arrival, they were trying to rush him…we’ll get it worked out. Hearts, once again, are all in the right place…but I’m not going to let this placement get blown because they aren’t listening to us!