First week of Pre School

September 1st 2014, about 8.40 am.  In a lull in the hullabaloo of getting our older girl to school and initiated there, we left to bring our younger girl to PRE school.   There was no knighting there or big ceremonies or hullabaloo.  In fact it was kind of sad.  A rather depressing handing over of the parents duties to other others who would become significant others over the course of a year or two.  I think it was too soon.  No more full days of "two of us",  me running along side keeping her from driving her little motorcycle too fast down the hill.  I think she wanted the return, or to continue those days also.

She cried hard when she realized we were leaving.  I wanted to give her a goodbye kiss but the teacher whisked us both out of the classroom, saying it is better to make it quick and no lengthy goodbyes and hanging around.  Oh, hanging around is my style, I thought sadly.  I didn't get a kiss and our little new pre schooler did not want to be there.

On the second and third days I took her myself and it went even worse.  When she realized I was taking her over to the pre school and not the park, she said she didn't want to go.  When I got in to the school, she didn't want to take off her outside shoes, nor her jacket nor have me leave.  The teacher picked her up and was going to take her to the classroom.  That was a bigger mistake.  She doesn't like other adults touching her.  She is afraid of other adults at first and she started kicking and crying hard.  Bad idea space cadet.  But the teacher got her to the classroom.

Hiding Place

Later, when I came for her, I got the report that she had run to a hiding place and had pretty much stayed there.  She had come out because some candy was being handed around for someones birthday.  So she showed herself for the candy.

The third day was pretty much the same except that I got her into her playing clothes and school shoes and escorted her myself into the classroom.  I didn't let the teacher touch her, let alone pick her up.  She ran right off, which I thought was a good sign, but it wasn't. She ran off to her hiding place.  The teacher assured me that many kids do this.  Its OK.  But I returned to get her later before lunch and she had gone through two pairs of clothes because she didn't want anything to do with the pre school, not even the toilet.  But the teacher assured me that she was getting better.  She had come out of her hiding place to sit with the kids during the singing.

I had joked with my little girl in the morning on the second day that she was breaking my heart by crying.  But she warned me on the third day "Daddy, I'm going to break your heart," by crying of course.  She did.  I mean, she broke my heart, by crying.

My friend told me his wife suffered from parental guilt, but he didn't.  I looked up some stories to find out what parental guilt was about, but it didn't fit my parental guilt.  I felt terrible that I was leaving her in the hands of as of yet a stranger while I went off to work at some nonsense job doing really not important work.  I should have been with her, giving her quantity parental time and being her significant other.  I felt I was shirking my real purpose, my parental duties.  No, none of the stories on parental guilt fit MY parental guilt. (How can Huffington Post get it so wrong?)

By the fourth day I was supposed to leave her there longer for lunch.  She broke my heart YET again and I went away, YET again cursing the stupidity of a job I was or wasn't doing and thinking that this was bad.  She wasn't ready for the pre school and we should hold her out for half a year, maybe even a full year.  I would take the cut in paycheck money as it had been last year.  Um, in other words, no paycheck. 

I came back after the lunch and was again assured by the teacher that she was making headway, even though she hadn't eaten or drunk anything for lunch.  She HAD sat with the class at lunch and was not hiding.  Most of the time.  I had been able to escort her to the room without her crying and she had sat down at the table.  The teacher had put a puzzle in front of her (after I had told the teacher that she liked doing puzzles).  But I thought it couldn't work as it was much too simple a puzzle for her, one of those little 10 big piece puzzles.  My girl has been doing puzzles for half a year and is doing 100 piece puzzles.  They got it wrong. I should take her out and take her home and do a puzzle with her worthy of her ability.  But on the other hand, she got right to it and seemed to find some satisfaction in it.   She hadn't run off at all.  She sat with the class.

On Friday, I was released a bit of my duties.  I didn't have to take her to pre school and get my heart broken again.  I picked her up after lunch and was warmly told about her progress.  She was drinking water during the lunch with the rest of the class.  Maybe she had even had a bit of the soup broth.

And that was the first week of school.  Is it worth it?  I mean should I take her out and have her wait another year?  I'm afraid, I wont be able to tell that till five or ten years down the road.  When she is a teenager and we will agree that she should have spent more time with her parents when she was younger.  You know those conversations you have with your parents way way after the fact, "yeah we should have started you later in the pre school, kept you at home more to enjoy life to its fullest as a toddler."  Those conversations which politely say, "yeah you got it wrong, thanks for messing up my life".  (Currently in process at this time, my own article about the meaning of parental guilt)

AFTER TWO MORE WEEKS.  She is just about acclimated into the pre school.  She eats the lunches, well, you know, eats what she likes.  No spinach.  Sleeps there for a nap, which is good because she had stopped doing that at home and she still needed the afternoon nap.  And sometimes SHE forgets to wave to us from the window as we leave the school yard.  I look in the window and see her standing with some other toddlers by the teacher looking at some new game.   I tap on the window.  She looks up after the third tap and waves.  Then goes back to her task at hand.