Monday, August 10, 2009

First Grade, First Day

The morning went okay. Connor woke up and limped into the bathroom (see the spectacular wound pictured below- although the limping is only in order to keep the Band-Aid on), moaning, "I still don't want to go to school!" He didn't freak out, though, and on the way to school we had what I though was an enlightening talk about how he was only facing the unknown for another few minutes, and in a half hour or so everything would be old hat.


I dropped him off, and his new teacher was nice and Wallace was there and we found his seat and Kelton sits across from him and Vivian sits beside him and maybe everything would be okay. I went to buy his writing tablets from the school bookstore, and when I brought them back to the classroom he was still hanging out with his friends and not even crying, so that was good.


I went over to the school at 2:15 to see how his day was and make sure he had enough sense to get on his daycare van. As soon as he saw me, he burst into tears and let me pick him up and CARRY him, right there in front of God and everyone, while whispering, "I want to go home," in his tiniest, shakiest voice. I took him to his daycare group and watched him stand there sniveling for a couple of minutes before announcing, "He's coming with me," and marching him back over to my office.


I had noticed he was carrying the note I put in his lunchbox. Uh oh. "Mom, I carried this around all afternoon. When I read it, it made me think about you and I started missing you and then at recess I had tears in my eyes and kind of whined about you then I cried a little and the rest of the day I just wanted to go home. I said to myself inside my head, 'I wish I could just stay home with Mom all day and just work in workbooks and learn stuff at home!'" And yeah, I cried a little, but I still managed to learn that the day was fine, and he enjoyed seeing his friends, and nothing traumatic or bad happened. He just wanted to be at home with me rather than at a place that wasn't immediately familiar. I understood.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in my office, coloring quietly and even staying put while I had a twenty-minute meeting in another office. And then finally we went home. And we'll do it all again tomorrow, only probably without a note in his lunchbox.

2 comments:

Stan said...

heartbreaking! you could home school, right? Just so you know, there is NO way I would have made him do daycare yesterday either. Hugs for everyone.

Stacey Greenberg said...

Omg that is tragic! My kids only love me like that when they are sleepy...which is why I always try and tire them out.