2nd Week of School

It has been a roller-coaster week in terms of how Ethan coped in school. Up to last Tuesday, there were the usual moans and groans, whines and whimpers, tears and even nightmares before he got to school. In particular, he had a tough night's sleep on Sunday, waking up several times in the middle of the night, and tossed and turned a lot; we concluded that it was due to stress over the next day's school. Over the weekend, in his paranoia, he had also asked several times if he was going for school those couple of days.

The most difficult day for both Ethan and I was Tuesday. He cried hard before leaving home for school in the morning, and it was tiring to repeat the coaxing and comforting process after lunch. It didn't help that we had to fetch him to school once again for a parent-teacher meet that evening. So it was in fact, 3 rounds of comforting from me... Top that up with a briefing conducted solely in french, where everything sounded like gibberish to me after the 1st 10 minutes, I was absolutely mentally and emotionally drained at the end of that day.

But magically, Ethan had a wonderful Thursday and Friday. I suspect it was due to a good Wednesday break for him - an interesting morning library visit for him (where he actually picked out a french storybook to read and understood it with my help), a short afternoon music lesson which he enjoyed thoroughly, and a couple of carousel rides on a "Thomas the Train" nearby home in the evening. In fact, he was pretty cheery as I brought him to school on Thursday, and almost couldn't wait to enter his classroom; I had to hold on to him to remove his jackets and bag, put on his apron before letting him run off into the classroom.

His mood dipped during lunch on Friday. When I met him at noon, he started tearing as if he had been bullied at school or people had been unkind to him. Yet, he couldn't reply to my probing as to what had happened that morning, and simply continued to tear a little while. But that was just a small outburst. His mood dipped a lot more after lunch, when I brought him back for his nap. That was because he found out that he had to nap together with the rest of the pupils in his class. Previously, he had always got his way in sleeping on his own in a separate classroom. It is puzzling for me as to why he would have such a reaction. But hopefully, given time, he would adapt to the normal arrangement. Incidentally, I found out that his concept of "school" is that of just his classroom and not the entire premise. He was gesturing to his usual classroom when he cried aloud, "Ethan sleep in school!", and furiously shook his head when the teacher and I tried to coax him into the adjacent room where the rest of the pupils slept. At the end of the day, the teacher's feedback was that he had continued to cry inside the napping room but managed to fall asleep eventually. I noticed Ethan had moist eyes as I picked him up that evening.

This entire episode of crying over naps in the common room tells me that Ethan is not ready to go through the entire day in school yet. For the week to come, I shall continue to fetch him back during lunchtime for a home-cooked meal and pray that he would get used to sleeping with the rest of the kids. One step at a time for little Ethan.