Pep Talks

School starts again tomorrow, and I have mixed feelings about it.  I’m grateful that we will be returning to a schedule that is more structured, but also am a little sad that the freedom of our holiday break is ending.  I know kiddo is feeling a mix of emotions, too, because he talked to me about it during “Mom Time” tonight.

Kiddo has had a notorious time with transitions throughout his life, most likely due to his extra-early arrival into this world and, consequently, the developmental challenges that accompanied it.  And school has been the most difficult, challenging, emotional roller-coaster of any transition we’ve faced thus far.

So you have a little history on how school has looked for him…

Kiddo actually began school just a week shy of his third birthday, in the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) Program offered through our school district.  His first two years were spent in a class to help with the significant speech delays and challenges he had; the third was spent in a kindergarten-prep class.  He did fairly well through most of those years, but started having some real challenges toward the end of year three.

Unfortunately, he aged out of that program and we didn’t have a lot of good options (at least, nothing we felt was a real fit for him) as he headed into kindergarten; so we tried to mainstream him with extra support in the classroom.  That first year was pure hell.  (I’m skipping those details tonight, but may choose to fill them in at another time.)

Last fall, we continued mainstreaming into first grade with a lot of support from the school staff and a much more positive teacher, but kiddo continued to have challenge after challenge, and spent more time in the principal’s office than in the classroom.  We knew he wasn’t learning much because of how he was acting, and the simple fact that he wasn’t in the classroom much of the time he was in the building, but didn’t know what to do.

I dreaded seeing the school’s number on my caller ID, because I knew I was going to hear he had done something naughty.  It broke my heart to hear of his aggression toward other kids and staff members, and put me in tears when I was asked to come get him from school because he was so unmanageable.  It certainly wasn’t what we wanted for our kiddo, but we were short on options.

If we had the financial resources, hubby and I would have hired a private tutor to “home-school” him on the spot.  After spending almost every day with him for the past seven-plus years, it's clear that I am not meant to be his teacher, too.  Unfortunately, our resources didn’t allow for that option, so we continued looking for a better fit.

Thankfully, somewhere around the beginning of November, we were given the opportunity to check out a different placement (once again, within the Special Education Program) for kiddo.  So we scheduled a visit to the classroom, a meeting with the teacher, and sat down to write a new IEP for him.  We were able to help him make the transition to the new school/classroom and full days (he had been going half-days up until that point because his prior building wasn’t set up to assist him with more) the half-week just prior to Thanksgiving break.

Back to tonight…

So, part of what we do to help minimize kiddo’s anxiety when it comes to transitions is give him lots of advance notice about what is coming, talk about the timing of when it is going to happen, and explain what it will look like…to the best of our ability.

We’ve been tracking our holiday break on a calendar so kiddo knows what day it is, and how many he has left before returning to school.  He has known for weeks that he goes back (in his words) on “Monday, January 7^th, 2013!”

Tonight, as we were talking about what tomorrow’s schedule will look like, kiddo expressed his displeasure at going back to school.  So I asked him more about what was bothering him.  “It’s just so much work,” he said.  “They have us busy and working all the time.  I just don’t want to do it.”

Part of what I know about all that “work” time is that kiddo refuses to do his work during the planned classroom time, so he has to make it up during play time or recess.  And part of the reason he doesn’t do his work is because he often doesn’t understand the directions or what is expected of him.  So we had a little pep talk and spent some time breaking down, step by step, what was happening; talking about how it affects his fun time; and brainstorming with him how he can make other choices (like asking for help) so he gets his work done and can play, too.

I also found out he’s especially disappointed about missing play time because he wants to make friends.  And that’s something I never thought I’d hear come out of his mouth.  Kiddo has always been more of a solo-play, or one-on-one type of kid.  So to hear him ask specifically about how I made friends, and express his wish to connect with a particular classmate, was exciting!

So we had a second pep talk tonight.  And it was great to brainstorm with him about something new.  Instead of problem-solving a tough situation, we had fun looking at something fresh, and talking about where he might start with it.  I’ll be curious to hear if any of what we talked about tonight sticks with him through the day tomorrow, and what he did with that information.