xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#' Yeah. Good Times.: Seeking parental advice

Friday, September 17, 2010

Seeking parental advice

I don't often ask for advice, so you should all feel pretty special right now. Go ahead, pat yourselves on the back... sigh... I'll wait... *looks at watch*

Anyhoo, Child 2 has been adjusting nicely to Kindergarten, and so have I, thank you very much... but this week has been a little tougher for him; I think the honeymoon phase is over. He's been waking up at night crying, saying he's having bad dreams, he's been making up excuses why he can't go to school, etc. Today when we got home he asked me if we still had any pacifiers in the house (he gave them up at least a year ago) because he wanted to know if they still felt good in his mouth (he's SO CUTE!). There's a lot of new shit going on, the social structure is different from what he's used to, yesterday he wasn't picked for the soccer team he wanted to be on at lunch and he had a major meltdown about it (coincidentally, I watched the whole thing from the hair salon across the street. Let me tell you it is no fun watching your child have a meltdown when you have no idea what's going on and can't do anything about it. It was like watching a movie with the sound off where the main character is a piece of your soul being ripped from you.)

He's feeling sad and lonely and scared and he doesn't want to let me go in the mornings and this is a huge deal for him and I want to help make him feel better but, oddly, I'm not freaking out about it, I'm just calmly thinking about it. Weird. So, I'm wondering, what are some things I can do right now that would make this all easier for him? If you are a parent of a former kindergartener and you have been in this place before, please feel free to offer advice.....



11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drugs.

jillsmo said...

For him or for me?

Anonymous said...

we'd better clarify exactly who "anonymous" is since the mother of this blogger also comments from time to time.

jillsmo said...

I think the mother of this blogger should use the "Name/URL" option from the drop down menu below, instead of "anonymous" and put "Mom" in the name field and leave the "URL" field blank.

Jill said...

See? Easy.

TMWHickman said...

Yeah, I've got a two year old who is collecting "incident reports" like other kids collect baseball cards. Probably not the ideal advice giver...

jillsmo said...

Have I mentioned how much I love that boy? If I haven't mentioned it in the last day... I love that boy.

Mom said...

if this worked, then that was easy.

Nobodyspecial said...

I am a girl, o.k. I admitted it! Happy now?!
And by that I mean I just couldn't leave my widdiw boy at school the first day, the teachers had to throw me out. Unmanly? Probably, but that's me, I even cried a little. I din't like leaving my kids with strangers when they were small. Even now, homeschool is making me feel sooo much better... I have issues.
The teachers helped convince me that I needed to let him go it on his own under their supervision (which I felt was lacking in direct specific concentration on MY kid but whatever) and I eventually got used to it. He had to adjust along with me. Frankly, I think it was my inability to really deal with it well that slowed my pace to match his and we were able to move on together (I'm not sure that makes sense but I'm going with it anyway).
What I did for him was to make a big deal about "what happened at school today" on the drive home. No matter what happened, I wanted all the details, and names of the kids he played with and all that. This way he had a story to tell daddy every day that daddy was very interested in and gave him extra attention. That seemed to work pretty good. He would go to school basically to get material for the drive home when daddy asked how his day was. I'm not sure that's advice.... but it's what I did.

Anonymous said...

awe my little one did this too in kindergarten and it sadly didn't get much better throughout the year. i just really talked up the fun parts of school every night before bed and hoped it would last throughout the night and help pursuade him to go to school the next day. as he has more fun hopefully he'll get more excited to go. :) good luck. :)

jillsmo said...

That seems to be general consensus, to hype up the fun. Luckily he's one of those weird kids that thinks math is fun. Thanks guys! (And I think I'll still try the drug thing, just to be on the safe side. But for me. Not him.)

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