Tonight when I put Eric to bed, he prayed that he would be sick tomorrow so he wouldn’t have to go to kindergarten. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a first-time or rare occurrence, despite the many conversations we’ve had about needing to be healthy or about why going to school is a good thing.
Yesterday (Saturday) when Eric woke up, the first thing he said was, “Can I please not go to school the day after tomorrow?” Throughout the day, he repeated this request over and over—every time he thought of it, and today has been the same, except now it's "tomorrow."
This past Friday morning, Eric made himself throw up, hoping that would keep him home from school. Wednesday and Thursday he had actually been home (and I'd taken the days off of work) because he’d coughed so much in the mornings I didn't think I could send him to school, but then as soon as the other kids were gone he felt great and did all of his usual activities:
getting his hair cut,
asking for hot chocolate,
dressing George up as Santa George,
even practicing his reading.
So, what's going on?
Eric had a wonderful start to kindergarten in September. He loved his teacher, made friends right away and was excited about going to school.
When he'd been going for about a week, though, and the gradual entry completed its course of leading the kids up to full days, Eric started complaining. He told me, "I wish I could go back to when I first started kindergarten," i.e., when he only went for an hour or two then came home.
Soon after that, he had a confusing incident when a new friend's mom didn't want her daughter to play with him anymore (because the little girl had said Eric was her "boyfriend"). Eric became really worried about getting in trouble at school, and he started not wanting to go.
Next, his teacher got sick with a terrible flu, and she ended up being off work for two weeks. On one of the days (the day Eric was "special helper"), she came for the morning but was so sick she had to leave halfway through the day.
Eric didn't like having all the substitutes (but these things happen), and then he ended up having a cough himself (completely unavoidable) and staying home for five days.
After missing work for a couple of days, I asked my parents to look after Eric one day (fun at Grandma and Grandpa's!) and then my niece to watch him another day (fun with Becca!) ... so it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that he didn't want to go back to school the following Monday.
Even though his teacher was back and his cough had gone, Eric cried and begged to stay home. It took a long time to get him into the classroom, and with each day, there were more tears, the begging to stay home got more desperate, and the reasons to stay home became more complicated.
Eric was afraid of getting in trouble because he'd had to sit out in gym after accidentally hitting someone with a ball. He was worried about some of the kids being mean to him or not liking him. He was worried he would get sick at school and need to come home.
But talking to his teacher, I found Eric was doing great with following school rules/routines and making friends. She said that every day I'd left him crying he'd been happy and fully engaged in class within a few minutes.
When I pick Eric up after school, he is always talking to people outside, running to join in a soccer game with the Grade 5 boys or shouting out to friends he sees from a distance. He really does seem fine.
At night, Eric often agrees to go to school nicely the next day, but in the morning he changes into a different person, consumed by fear and worry.
It was so sad on an inside out/backwards day the school was holding--Eric could hardly contain his excitement in the morning at home--he was full of confidence and fun--then as soon as we started walking up the hill to his classroom, he was crying and asking to go home.
The teachers at the school got involved and came up with the idea that Alaina could take him into class in the mornings. This would cut down on the long, drawn-out goodbyes where I would be trying to talk him into going to school and he would be begging to go home.
The teachers also reminded me that Alaina had had many of the same difficulties when she was in kindergarten and Grade 1, and now she is an excellent student with lots of good friends and feels very comfortable at school. As of her first report card, she had 100 percent on every test in French, math, science, spelling, history ... am I missing anything?
Anyway, Eric did well going in with Alaina for three days, and then he started having a hard time being passed off to his big sister. Eventually, I felt that it wasn't fair for Alaina to start her days this way, so we went back to the long negotiations. Educational assistants have offered him stickers, other kids have invited him in, even the principal offered to walk in with him, but Eric has only gone into class being dragged by his teacher while he cried and begged to go home.
The most recent days Eric has gone to school, Jason has taken him in, and apparently that has gone better, but on Friday I was at the school for a choir assembly, and I watched a very troubled Eric repeatedly go talk to his teacher, then sit by the side of the gym instead of going up to sing. He told me later that he was telling his teacher that he was sick and needed to go to Mommy. Apparently the problem was that he'd seen me in the audience.
Our next step is working with a school-based team to come up with new strategies to help Eric's mornings go more smoothly, but it's hard to imagine anything we haven't already tried.
I have been wondering if we've got him at the wrong school, if I should leave my job and try the virtual school, or if we should just stick with it and hope things go well like they did for Alaina.
The process has been heartbreaking for me, and obviously deeply troubling for Eric. I think we're both dreading tomorrow morning, but I will try not to let it show....
