Last February, I got teary when Steve and I visited some pre-schools because I just couldn't believe we were turning that "big boy" corner...I am sentimental and over-emotional about such things (I already know to prepare myself with much kleenex for real "milestones" in my children's' future). So, when his 1st day came, I should have known that it was a parent issue just as much as Reed's when the separation was difficult. As rough-and-tumble as he is, our firstborn is an attached, sensitive little thing!
We took pictures and did the long goodbye on Day 1, and Steve even got watery, too...who wouldn't when your son is clinging to your leg pleading, "Daddy, I don't want you to GO!!!!". Day two was the worst, he sputtered out through sobs, "Mommy, I want you to stay one and two and three and four more times" (which I took to mean "a long time" in 2-year old language). He also told me he "needed to suck his fingers again", which killed me as he never has done this, so I wondered if that was a self-soothe thing he'd discovered? (Pretty introspective and so sad, I thought!). I picked him up that day to find him in a change of pants and his teacher handed me a bag with his wet ones, along with his lunchbox with untouched food as he didn't want to eat, either. She explained that he'd cried on and off all day. On the way home he told me, "Dereck pushed me. He is BAD. The teacher said 'Dereck, we don't push our friends!'. Mommy, that's BAD". Sigh...
...and that night was back-to-school night. I felt that the teachers were only talking directly to us (though I realistically know that they weren't) when we all signed "potty contracts" which basically said that if our kids were still having a hard time with their training at school, it was legitimate for them to ask us to find another school with week's notice. Um, great. So, I cried again that night...this time out of despair as the "mama bear" came out in me, my poor baby :)!
Day three was much better...one of his best...and I chalked up my tears from the night before to my own back-to-school exhaustion. Note to self, I reminded my thoughts: this new experience is indeed NEW to us all, of course it's not going to be "butterflies and rainbows" from the get-go, though that's all I'd pictured when I'd happily read pre-school books to him all summer and when we'd merrily shopped for and packed up new classroom supplies, taken pictures of his cuteness (lunchbox in hand and all) in the yard, etc.! The teacher in me, I guess ;)
Despite the center's director mentioning to me that Reed "has lasted the longest" of all the 'criers', and also the morning that a parent said to me upon drop-off, "oh, he's so cute. I felt so sorry for him the other day when I peeked in their room to see it was him that was crying so hard", each day his tears have lessened from the previous and we have even had two NO TEAR days. I actually almost shed happy ones the day he looked super nervous but instead of crying seemed to think things through to get his act/courage together and exclaimed, "after a while, crocodile!" as I was leaving.
I still have some Kinders in my room who cry for their parents when saying goodbye in the morning and we are one more week into school than my Reed, so I am proud of his gradual-though-definite bravery during this big adjustment (and, may I say, of mine too ;)).
