Hellobee

Mr. Train and I are type A personalities. We are planners. Do you know what happens to type A planners when they have kids? That’s right… we slowly slip into madness as the chaos of life rages on. I am kidding, mostly. But there are moments in my parenting journey that have thrown me for a loop and this is one of them.

Of course, as soon as our kids were born, we started looking into the education years. When our oldest, JP, was born the plan was for me to go back to work in a year and we would look into day care. 6 weeks later… boom, we were pregnant with twins. That blew that plan out of the water. I would stay home because three infants in daycare was more than I was making as a high school teacher.

So we started to look forward. JP was born in November. In our state that made him eligible for Transitional Kindergarten, a program designed for late birthdays that would give them one extra year of schooling before kindergarten. The plan was this: JP would go into preschool as suggested by our pediatrician. The following year he would go into TK.  We would put our twins into preschool. They would then all start kindergarten together the following year. We were excited about the TK program not only because it would give our kid the extra year of school but it was also part of our public school program. Tuition to preschool in Los Angeles is not exactly easy on the bank account.

After finishing his year in preschool we started prepping for TK. We read books about the first day. We talked about his schedule. We went to the school orientation so he could see his new space. He was ready to go. The first day he practically ran hand in hand down to the school, dragging me behind. He was ready to take on the world. I left him that day feeling good about our new routine.

I walked back to pick him up at the end of the day and his head was down and there were no smiles. He walked into the house and had a complete meltdown. So much so that he pulled his clothes off and writhed on the floor in his underpants kicking as screaming. I don’t say this lightly. I don’t say it to embarrass my child. I say it to fully depict how undone he was after one day at school. My heart broke. I am a teacher and no kid should come home so distraught.

When he calmed down, he said school was fine but he didn’t eat because he couldn’t open his plastic container. Oh man…. EPIC MOM FAIL! I didn’t teach him how to pop open his sandwich container? So, I figured the meltdown very easily could have been due to hunger and exhaustion. It was after all his first day in a full day setting. We worked together on all the things in his lunch box and how to get it open and sent him off again.

As the days continued so did the meltdowns. He said his teacher told him he needed to practice his name because kindergartners write their own names. We tried to do the homework (work sent home that was not finished in class and additional writing practice) but each afternoon was met with fit after fit.

After two weeks, I wanted to talk with the teacher about working on weekends to finish up the work that was being sent home instead of turning it in on Friday. I told her we were having some very volatile emotional reactions after school and I would like to work on his homework over the weekend until he transitioned a little better into his new setting. After all, he was supposed to be in a TK class which was designed to be a lighter version of kindergarten for those kids who are a little younger. The fact that he had work at all after school was a bit much in my opinion, but that wasn’t the battle I was fighting at the time.

What happened next changed everything. His teacher took the eraser end of her pencil and used it to tip his downcast chin to look at her. She said, “Now listen to me. You need to do your work on time and quit giving your parents such a hard time. It’s just writing practice.”

I can’t describe his look any way other than empty. And brokenhearted can only begin to explain the combination of despair and rage inside me. She looked at me and said, “There you go mommy, problem solved.”

Her tone was bitter and condescending and I was shocked into silence. I am an introvert and do not like confrontations. I could not process what had happened quick enough to respond to her.

This time it was me walking home, almost in tears, hand in hand with my son who had probably gone through two weeks of negative feedback. How dare she push his chin with her pencil? How dare she speak to either of us with such a foul tone? How could I have allowed him to be treated this way? What other negative comments were made when I wasn’t around?

I walked into the house and looked at my husband. I told him JP was not going back to that school with that teacher. It was a shock. All of our plans for finances and paying for tuition with three kids was relying on only having two in preschool. We spent the weekend looking into it and on Monday I was at our preschool asking if we could enroll all three boys in the preschool class. Luckily, they allowed us a bit of a “bulk discount” and admitted him right away. We would manage, but we would most likely go into debt for a year in order to do it. He was unenrolled at our public school and they seemed unconcerned with my reasoning. It was the first time I was blown off as “one of those moms” and it would not be the last.

What I learned that day is that not all schools are the right fit for all kids. We don’t know until we try. Having a kid with some special needs throws a lot more wrenches into this parenting gig than I had ever imagined. Plans get thrown out the window for new plans and we have to adapt. I do feel like there are times that my poor brain can’t handle one more thing, and then ten more things come crashing down. In the end we manage. We buckle down and take on the challenges as they come.