The One About Preschool Problems, Parties & Pressure
This week my oldest is “graduating” from preschool and I have mixed emotions:
I’m excited for him, because he’s growing up and starting to spread his little kiddo wings.
I’m sad for me, because my first born is getting older, is starting to spread his little kiddo wings… and before I know it I’ll have blinked and he’s ditched my nest to make one of his own and oh my god I’m spiraling!
I’m excited for myself because this means he’ll be attending school full time next year.
And, of course, I feel guilty for feeling happy about that… Gotta love that vicious cycle of mom guilt!
I’m also using air quotes because there is no “ceremony,” per se, but all of the 4 year olds are putting on a circus and that is supposed to serve as the culmination of the school year and, moreover, their time as preschoolers. Cole is playing a lion and it will probably be the best thing I will ever see and I cannot wait. But because there is this graduation, disguised as a circus, my mother-in-law, very casually, asked me if we’d be throwing him a party…
I want to pause there for a minute because, a few things:
I have a bit on my plate right now, requiring my immediate time and attention, and so I haven’t been able to look at any peripheral items. My bad.
Beyond my own educational experience, this is my first foray into the school system and therefore I’m not hip to a lot of the rules or expectations yet, celebratory etiquette included. Which leads me to my final point:
Is this a thing?! I’ve personally never been to a preschool graduation party, that I can remember. I’m familiar with highschool and college graduation parties, even kindergarten and junior high celebrations seem reasonable, because those are pretty significant milestones. But nursery school?
A good 50% of the time the school I’m referring to is interchanged with the word daycare. Are we doing daycare graduations as well? That seems a little bit bananas to me but then again I also think those Pinterest-inspired first birthday bashes are a little much. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones fit for Instagram, with the food trucks, and the balloon installation and those organic bath bomb party favors? Whatever happened to backyard birthdays where you sat in lawn chairs and watched the kids running through the sprinkler? Perhaps you enjoyed a slice of Duncan Hines and got a single balloon as a party favor on your way out? Those were the days. Today we feel so much pressure to pull off these extravaganzas and, I’ve got to ask, who in sam hill has time for that? My middle son is turning three in two weeks and I don’t need that kind of pressure.
To clarify, I have zero problem celebrating my children and their accomplishments. The fact that Cole’s going to have finished preschool is an accomplishment worthy of acknowledgement, especially considering how we started. I’ll get into that in a minute. In fact, we are constantly looking for reasons to reward him. In this household we are big fans of positive reinforcement and we have the reward chart to prove it. So again, it’s not that I’m knocking the concept of a preschool graduation party, if that’s your jam, more power to you. It's just… one more thing! One more thing on my plate, one more thing I didn’t see coming. Guess I’d better add it to the ever growing list!
Putting a pin in the party debate for a minute, I want to talk about our school experience because there’s a lot to unpack there. But, before I dive in, a little context:
Cole never went through the terrible twos. I’m not just saying that. He was the sweetest pea. Affectionate, fun, and just a generally good natured human being that, even if you didn’t like kids, you wouldn’t mind being around. Sure he cried and whined sometimes but those instances were few and far between. He almost never threw tantrums.That’s been Ethan’s department. Cole was easy like Sunday morning (obviously, Sunday mornings, before children). Until he turned three.
Cole being his adorable two year old self, in a tire.
In Cole’s defense, it was a rough year for him. That year was tough for all of us but there were three noteworthy changes that probably affected Cole the most and, likely, more than we can ever fully appreciate. The year Cole turned three he:
Welcomed yet another baby brother, Theo.
Moved out of the home he was born into.
Started school.
Of those major changes I do believe that starting school was the most significant and the most challenging for him. It meant a new routine, being in an unfamiliar environment with new rules, and being cared for by people other than family and friends, for the first time. Actually, it was really the first time he had been around other people, besides family and friends, at all. Cole was two when the pandemic hit and therefore most of that year was spent locked away in our house. As a result, opportunities for any sort of peer interaction were slim. Playdates didn’t exist during COVID. The playground looked like that intro to Are You Afraid Of The Dark, with nothing but creepy, ghost swings and vacant carousels. Mommy and Me was canceled. All those little kiddo gyms were closed until further notice. If not for his cousins, our friends that lived across the canal from us who had a little girl his age, and Sesame Street, the poor kid wouldn’t know what another child looked like! Imagine what had to be going through his mind that first day of school?! Aside from the relief he must have felt to know that they made humans in his size, he probably felt like he was dropped off on another planet! And the whole mask mandate probably ratcheted the fear factor up a notch or two. So not only was he in a strange place, with strange people, but they were masked up. That’s terrifying!
So when we started to see a shift in Cole’s behavior, it wasn’t entirely surprising. At first this salty side was cute. It was more funny than offensive because some of the things he would say were so outrageous and ridiculous that you couldn’t help but laugh. For example: A toy broke and I had to throw it out because it was dangerous. When Cole wanted to hold onto it I told him that we couldn’t, it could hurt him, so we needed to throw it in the garbage. His response was “we should throw you in the garbage.” I mean… Come on, right?! It was a smart, well timed burn. I had to give him credit! But these zingers started coming in hot and heavy and, not only that, were often accompanied by tears or he’d be red in the face and you could tell he was really upset. I felt a small kernel of concern in the pit of my stomach.
Over the next month or so we struggled with everything from breakfast time to bedtime and everything in between. If it was time to get dressed, “no it isn’t“. If we needed to clean up our toys, it would be in “in a minute.” I would make him a hot dog for lunch, per his request, but it wasn’t what he wanted. If it was time for a nap he decided he was going on a sleep strike. In fact, that’s what I thought this defiance was about, this need to argue seemingly over everything. I thought he was just cranky because he stopped taking his afternoon siesta. Which, I suppose, I was to blame for. A quick story on that:
He had started developing, what I would learn is called, “pacifier teeth” (wtf, by the way). This, I would find out, is when the teeth start to misalign from prolonged pacifier use. Not knowing what in Lucifer's lair was going on or how to fix it, I called my sister-in-law, Kerry, because she knows all. Also because she herself has kids that are older, so she’s already seen it all and knows what the fuck is going on and never seems to panic. She gave me a script to bail on the beeboos (binkies, pacies, whatever you want to call them). That was a tall order and another tricky transition. We had to call in a favor to the tooth fairy to ask her friend, the beeboo fairy, to slowly take away his beeboos in exchange for small toys. And by small toys I mean cheap toys. He had a ton of beeboos so figure a buck a beeboo and you’re getting up there. But it does work. Before I knew it he was sleeping without the use of a pacifier. But, it was only at night. Right around the time the last beeboo was taken away, the naps stopped and my honeybunch, sugar plum, pumpy-umpy-umpkin was replaced by one mean muggin munchin.
Cole’s first preschool class picture, mean muggin indeed
While the lack of naps likely contributed to his sour disposition, I suspected it was more than that. When his teacher, we’ll call her Ms. Trunchbull, began complaining, my suspicions were confirmed. Initially her grievances were, what I would call, run of the mill. One day the issue would be that “he wouldn’t sit for circle time.” Another day it was that “he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.” Standard stuff, I would assume, certainly correctable. But when he started bringing sass to the school yard, the teachers were not there for it. One Tuesday or Thursday, at pick up, I learned that he told the assistant teacher that he had “too much to do” when told he had to sit out of an activity for another, unrelated, offense. At yet another pick up I was informed that he was sent to the principal’s office. I can’t recall what for but I do remember that when the principal asked if he followed his teacher’s directions he answered with this gem: “sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. That’s the difference.” Again, it’s hard not to laugh when you picture a pint sized person saying this shit. But, at this point, the saucy little squirt was making my life more difficult than it already was. The two days a week that I looked forward to, if only for the two hour sliver of solace school afforded me, I had started to dread. At nearly every dismissal there was a problem waiting for me and this teacher always addressed it publicly. In front of all of the parents, and their children, she’d air our laundry out for all to hear. This really chapped my ass, for a couple of reasons:
Children, especially young children, do not benefit from being shamed or embarrassed. They are impressionable and want to trust us. So when we label a child as “bad” or imply they are “bad” they believe us.
Some parents can be assholes. If they hear something they don’t like about your kid, chances are they won’t like your kid, or you, and now your kid just lost out on a potential friend. Not cool.
I understand that everyone’s busy, that she’s got a bunch of kids to dismiss, but to lob these issues at me, while Cole’s playing chicken with cars leaving the parking lot, as the other parents swarm around? I felt like I was trying to catch ground balls barehanded at Yankee stadium. We would do our best to address the behavioral problems as they arose but there’s only so many times I could lecture Cole in the car on the way home from school. “We keep our hands to ourselves.” We don’t talk back to our teachers.” “We don’t do this.” “We don’t do that.” I was beginning to feel funny about how we were handling this. I felt like it had to be a fine line between breaking him in and breaking his spirit. And I also felt a bit like a broken record that, frankly, he was tuning out. This wasn’t working, we needed another approach. Enter the reward chart.
This, as it would turn out, is a delicate science. The key is to established a BAR:
B: Behavior being rewarded. What is being rewarded? What are you looking to improve upon? Make that the opportunity.
A: Average timing for reward. How often you’re doling out dolls and what not. Weekly? Monthly?
R: Reward itself. Price Point is important here!
I’ll admit, I was desperate for this to work, I wanted to shut that teacher up, so I was a little hasty getting it in motion. Rookie mistakes were made. First, I did not set clear expectations around what was being rewarded. I felt badly about the recent car assaults and needed him to see that we weren’t just paying attention to the mistakes, that we were also noticing all of the good work he was doing. So I might have been a little too liberal with my sticker distribution. If he shared a toy with his brother, he received a sticker. If he finished his dinner, he got a sticker. He put his own shoes on: sticker. Remembered to flush the toilet: sticker. You get a sticker, you get a sticker, you get a sticker! It was raining stickers! It was no surprise that by the end of day one we had reached our weekly sticker goal, which led to my second mistake.
If my goal was for him to see that we were noticing his good deeds, I had succeeded. There was no way not to see it. That chart was loaded with stickers and he noticed. He would see that a column was full and ask to count them. Once I had, he’d declare “Mom! I’ve reached my goal! Time for a reward!” I couldn’t argue that he hadn’t, because he had, and I couldn’t explain that we were striving for a weekly cadence, because he was three. So off to the toy store I went, which leads me to my third mistake. This I do not blame Cole for, or even myself really. It’s capitalism and greed and a bunch of other things like supply and demand and material prices that cause toy prices to be so obscene. But, whoever decided $15 for a plane figurine was reasonable should be tarred and feathered. It was a small toy, arguably one of the smallest in the store, located discreetly near the cash register. It wasn’t like Cole was looking to rape my wallet, he wasn’t being tempted by prominent displays. But these slippery sons of bitches at the toy store had taken the anti-supermarket approach and were succeeding! $15 plus tax later and Cole was beaming while I was left scratching my head. I realized I had slipped down the slope and that my behavior modification system was going to need some modification itself if we were going to afford college.
Some tweaks and a couple of (less expensive) toys later and we had started to see some progress. The difference in Cole’s attitude was noticeable. I didn’t feel like I was caught up in a never ending field day in which the only game was tug of war. He was starting to seem like his two year old self, only more independent and toilet trained. He was amenable to constructive criticism and responded well to prompting. Even Ms. Trunchbull seemed to back off. She was discernibly less crabby. I don’t know if she was seeing the change in him that we had at home, or she finally got herself a snack or took a nap, but things were looking up. Before we knew it, Christmas was upon us, as well as cold and flu season.
With the exception of the stomach bug, I don’t remember being sick as a kid. Even still the only thing I remember about it was that I had to miss my class Halloween party. Back then, they used to allow candy in school so I was pretty bummed. Now, as an adult with school aged children, my experience is entirely different than the one I remember. For starters, the school no longer allows candy. Healthy garbage only. What’s more noteworthy is that the kids seem to be sick, all of the time. Ever since Covid came into our lives there are now these “super bugs” capable of crippling grown men. I haven’t found a legal drug that can kill these things. Whatever Cole catches, and then shares with the rest of us, seems to loiter around like “that guy” who’s overstayed his welcome. And while it does, eventually, leave, it’s never for long and it always seems to come back stronger and stays longer than the last time. Leading up to Christmas, the kids all seemed to contract the same virus and it was a doozy. It was one of those colds that swept the school like a plague and the symptoms seemed to vary by kid with the exception of this persistent cough and an ungodly amount of snot. The usual soundtrack of chaos that played in the background of my life was now remixed with coughing and sneezing and the occasional blowing of the nose. Because, afterall, out of my three children, only one had learned to blow his own. The other two had no choice but to be Nose Frida’d. If you know, you know! If you’re unfamiliar with the Nose Frida, here you go. I’m not a brand ambassador or anything, it’s just that my explanation could never do it justice.
While Ethan and Cole eventually recovered in time to enjoy Christmas, Theo wasn’t as lucky. He was still an infant, afterall, and one that had already suffered a long stay in the NICU due to respiratory distress. The cold had settled in his lungs and on the day he turned two months he was admitted to the hospital and he wasn’t released until after Christmas. I could write an entire blog post detailing that experience, and maybe I will one day, but for the purpose of this entry I’ll do my best to sum it up: eight days in the PICU, seven nights on a Hospital bed, six different nurses/doctors, four vending machines, two presents from “Santa”... and a partridge in a pear tree.
Theo in Hospital, Christmas
New Years came and went and soon school was back in session. I was banking on the fact that this break would have afforded Ms. Trunchbull some extra long naps or, atleast, some decent enough snacks. Initially all was quiet on the fuss front and we managed to go a week or two without another dumpster fire dismissal. Being a mother I should have known to be suspicious of the quiet stretch. Sure enough, by mid-Janurary Ms. Trunchbull resumed her regular routine of public displays of aggravation. We managed to get her over to email, because fuck that, but now she had the opportunity to double check her list and make sure she never left anything out. These notes were long. Initially I responded, assuring her we were working with him (because we were) and also making sure to note the progress we were seeing at home, encouraging her to try the methods we felt were working for him. But my inbox was becoming inundated with these nasty notes. It seemed to me as though she only wanted to vent, she wasn’t interested in hearing what we had to say, what we had to suggest and so I stopped responding. Come March it was time for Cole’s mid-year “progress” report. I won’t drown you in the details of that meeting, because it was more or less the same as the last with the following exceptions:
Mark joined.
The principal joined.
Mark and I vocalized our disappointment in how Ms. Trunchbull has delivered feedback to date.
We also expressed our concern for how consistently negative her feedback was. There was rarely any mention of progress.
Ms. Trunchbull dismissed our concerns and the principal defended her time and bandwidth.
We defended Cole. Not in the sense that we defended any wrong doing on his behalf. We know that he made mistakes. We defended his right to make mistakes. We defended his nature as a four year old human being who is learning right from wrong. We defended his right to be welcomed to school despite those mistakes and the learning curve required. We defended his educational future. Preschool is far too early to start hating school.
We withdrew him from the school.
In hindsight, perhaps putting Cole in a private, religiously-affiliated school wasn’t the best move. Maybe we should have shopped around more before enrolling him. Or waited a little longer to send him to nursery school. Maybe, perhaps, probably… These adverbs are joy thieves and mental health threats. At the end of the day, we made the best decision we could with the information we had. By the time we pulled him out of his first school, we had a better idea of what we did and didn’t want out of the next. We found another, less academically-structured, school that focuses on socialization - aka a school without a giant stick up its ass. That’s not to say that, since changing schools, every day has been a prance around the park. But instead of criticizing and chastising, the school worked with us and gave us constructive suggestions. Because of Cole’s history, they encouraged us to have him evaluated through CPSE. Again, another blog post for another time but, in short, he qualified for a Special Education Itinerant Teacher (SEIT) who helps him to better understand boundaries, self control, and generally how to play better with his peers. A lot of adults I know could probably benefit from having one of these around on a daily basis. Since having pal-ed up with this wonderful human being, and continuing with the reward system at home, we’ve seen tremendous progress in Cole. And that’s enough. Progress, not perfection. Some days are great and others suck, but his teachers go with the fucking flow because he’s four. Because they see that he’s a good, smart, affectionate kid that needs a little extra help. More importantly, they want him to love school and look forward to Kindergarten.
Cole’s second preschool picture, happy as a clam
All of that said, I’m sticking to my guns on my party position, because I do think it’s over the top! I’m not going to prioritize something, over other important things, that he doesn’t need or necessarily want just because other people might be. Or because someone decided that a preschool graduation party is on trend, or a qualifier of my love for my kids or what makes me a good mom. I know I love my kids. I know that I’m a good-ish mom. The fact that I’m not going to cancel Ethan’s speech appointment, to make time for this nonsense, proves that I’m a good-ish mom. That I’m not going to stretch myself skeletor-thin trying to pull it off, and then be a raging curmudgeon when it doesn’t look the way it did on Pinterest or Instagram, proves that I care about my family.
So what, I’m just going to do nothing? Heck no! I’m going to whip up a Duncan Hines classic, Funfetti, because that is what Cole picked out at the store. I’m going to give him the remote control snake that I bought last week, because he is on a Cobra kick and his little mind will be blown. I will park my ass in a lawn chair and enjoy him playing with this snake, while Ethan gets his speech lesson, and Theo wobbles all around. And there will be at least one balloon.
