It's my understanding that this has pretty much been the scene each and every day that the bus delivers a certain someone home from kindergarten.
Sometimes, the arms are outstretched like an airplane, but other than that, M3 pretty much runs herself right on into the house full of stories from her day and ready for a huge drink of water and a snack.Because her first day of school was last Wednesday, M3 successfully navigated her first week of school as of today. This is her first five-day week so we'll see whether fatigue sets in at any point. She does, on occasion of bedtime, question whether or not she has to return to school the next day or if it is a 'stay home' day. I can't quite make out if she's excited that she has to go back or if she'd rather just tell me, "Oh, that's okay, Mom. I think I have this school thing down now."
M3's class uses the behavior modification method geared around the traffic lights. Every kid starts the day on green, but can move to yellow if a repeated behavior isn't squelched. I'm sure, too, that a child could go straight to red if the violation warranted it, but for the most part, it seems like the move would be gradual.
M3's teacher had only planned to send home the colored-in behavior chart at the end of the week. We became "those parents" by requesting that we have daily notification. We offered to supply whatever she needed to make that happen. She offered to color in the days of a calendar each afternoon if we could print one off and send it to school. When M3 earned her first "yellow" Friday, it became painfully apparent how necessary the daily notification with an explanation would be. M3 either did not understand or did not want to relate to us how she earned her yellow card. Students must color their behavior chart with the corresponding color and they also must turn their own clip from green to yellow. However, M3 insisted she was on "green all day." And, although she related a half dozen stories of incidents which may or may not have elicited a negative response from her teacher, NONE of them related to the actual behavior that resulted in the yellow card. So frustrating. Because when we learned what had happened (M3 and her class were sitting on the carpet for story time and her teacher repeatedly had to ask M3 to stop talking to her neighbors and interrupting the story), we realized that this would have been a very public and very noticeable happening in a person's day. But, when reminded of this and the consequence, M3 acted as if this were all news to her and that, indeed, she ended up on yellow, but still not for any identifiable reason on M3's part.
We're also noticing a return of some food issues that we thought we'd weeded out our first months home. I had not readily anticipated how cafeteria eating situation may remind M3 of other times when she ate with lots of other children. We've had a resurgence of eating entirely too quickly and stuffing an inordinate amount of food into our face at the dinner table. We've had to revert to early reminders and work to avoid choking and other not-so-appetizing scenes at our dinner table.
On the plus side, M3 was able to recount at least the main characters in a story her teacher read her yesterday. She also has a better understanding of the sounds made by the letters "T" and "L." She's practicing writing numbers and knows more classmates' names each day. We've noticed what the psychologist told us to expect, however, and that is that until M3's development catches up cognitively, she will occasionally appear to need to forget some things to remember and use others. Rote things like days of the week are sometimes just out of reach for her to recite. We're working on it.
School will be a learning experience for all of us and in so many different ways than it ever was before now. It's so hard for me to imagine her, in another year or even two, doing the things I see current 1st graders doing. We just keep working toward our goals and are continually amazed at what she is learning.
We are nearing the magic window where I will begin to grow nervous, however. The two-week mark will likely spark the "I'm comfortable and know what's going on" feelings in M3. This may very well lead to the boundary pushing we would rather avoid. I'm hopeful her teacher will be willing to work with us and use us as a resource to help keep M3 in line and moving forward.
