Yesterday after school she said she liked school and she caught the rain! She seemed shaky but genuinely better than the day before.
This morning she woke up and said, “I don’t like school.” And then holding back tears, she said, “I don’t want to go to school.”
The holding back tears is the hardest to see, hear, and feel inside.
David held her for a while too as she continued to tell us that there are too many kids on the playground and school is hard. Then David drove her to school on his own because the school thought that would be better than both of us coming. The director recommended we get her there earlier so she could setting in with the kids, and so we did this morning. And in retrospect we thought we should have done that on day one too, so she could watch the other kids come in and not be the last person joining an established group.
When we pick her up, we bombard her with questions about school, and now I completely understand why parents do this. A while ago my sister was complaining that my mom kept asking her what she had for lunch. “I had a sandwich, mom! I mean who cares!?” But I totally get it. I don’t care what my sister had for lunch, but I want to know EXACTLY what my daughter had for lunch, how it tasted, how much she ate, where she ate it, who she sat next to, what it was wrapped in, what she drank, what utensils she used. I WANT TO KNOW IT ALL! I want to know what they talked about at circle time, what they did for play, what the library looks like, who the other kids are, what they are like, whether they poop in school, if diapers are changed standing up, truly no detail is too small for me.
Right now we ask how school was, and she thinks really hard, and then replies through her wet eyelashes, “Good!” But then she looks off to the distance and looks back and says, “I cried a lot.”
…
Comments