Just pokey?

When WJ was in the middle of his first year of preschool, I watched his class walking down the flight of stairs from the classroom to exit the building.  A group congregated outside, children in a line, holding hands with their partners.  They looked ready to walk to the park.  But the class did not yet move.  They were still waiting for WJ and the handful of other children trapped behind him as he dawdled down the stairs.  I watched this scene every day but on one particular day the preschool director stood next to me and asked, “Is WJ just pokey?”

WJ had always been a bit of a slowpoke.  A careful child.  Not a big risk-taker.

I saw it with my own eyes and wondered about it.  But hearing an educational professional make note turned my wondering into worrying.  I spent the next several months going over his developmental milestones in my head.  WJ had always reached gross motor markers just about the day before the parenting books said it was time to worry.  He was always within normal limits, but often at the very far end of those when it came to physical development.

At his four year-old check-up I mentioned my worries to his pediatrician.  I explained the school director’s questioning of his speed and a comment or two from his teachers about his avoidance of gross motor activities.  I explained my own worry about his speech development, which seemed to also be in this late but normal range.  I expected her to respond with her customary and reassuring every-child-is-unique kind of way.  Instead she took off her glasses and explained that if we had concerns in more than one developmental area, which we did—gross motor and speech, it would be wise to rule out any underlying cognitive issues and she wrote a referral for a complete battery of evaluations at the local child development institute. 

In shock, I went home and began scheduling appointments: developmental/cognitive assessment, speech evaluation, hearing test, language development assessment, occupational therapy evaluation, physical therapy evaluation. 

Here is what we found out.  WJ has some low muscle tone which makes some physical tasks more difficult for him to master.  Exactly what we had suspected.  There were no major problems but several of the evaluators suggested that a few months of therapy would help him build strength and muscle tone and help us as parents better know how to support his growth at home. 

What they suggested was true.  Within several months, we noticed WJ running and climbing with friends and fewer people asking me to translate his speech. 

Watching WJ work to exhaustion in his speech and physical therapy sessions that year brought me to a new level of understanding about what school must have been like for him.  That pokiness on the stairs manifested itself in other places in the classroom as well.  He would often be in the role of observer. Like a sports commentator, he liked to watch other children work and to talk about what they were doing but he was slippery about getting involved himself.  He took a lot of breaks, wandering around a bit.  WJ often seemed to be off in another world, daydreaming.

I began to wonder if these behaviors were the result of physical exhaustion.  Simple tasks like climbing up and down the stairs, sitting crisscross on the rug during circle time, controlling scissors and manipulating hard clay, all of these tasks were just a little harder for WJ than for most and took a little more of his physical energy to complete. 

While it may seem illogical to bring issues like climbing skills and running speed or a child’s grip on a crayon and ability to mold clay into the decision about school placement, I would argue that these issues are more important that we may think.  Physical and mental energy are connected.  If your body is tired, your mind is less available to learn, organize thinking and problem-solve. While it is true for all of us, I believe this affects young children especially because their coping skills are still so immature. Perhaps WJ’s adventures in La-La-Land were less about being a dreamy child and more about a lack of energy and strength.  As I researched this, I felt a stronger pull toward the decision to wait for kindergarten. 

With validation that WJ reaches milestones in the physical realm a little later than many children, we were able to see that some extra time to develop physically would help him to be ready to engage as actively as possible in the social and cognitive work of school.  You cannot rush development; you cannot teach strength.  But you can wait.  Growth takes time.

Plenty bright enough

A year ago, Dave and I were having many discussions with each other, with WJ’s teachers and school director, and with family members and friends all in an effort to make a decision about what to do about WJ and his schooling.

To send him to kindergarten or not?

I have been unable to avoid this desire from deep within my motherly pride to make it clear that this was never a question of intelligence.  So, here it is… This was never a question of my child’s intelligence.* 

WJ is “plenty bright enough,” was the message from the school.  Every indicator in front of us pointed toward a child who could learn easily, make connections, remember like an elephant on gingko balboa, and who was well equipped with pre-academic abilities. 

Plenty bright enough, but a little young. 

Whenever I wish on an evening star or a birthday cake candle from this point on, it will always be a wish for schools that start in January. WJ had been in school part-time for a year and a half when we made the decision for him to wait for kindergarten.  Many of you with children who have late summer birthdays may know the pattern we had already begun to see in the school year.

At the beginning of each school year, as the leaves changed colors and carpeted the ground with sweet smelling piles, I donned battle gear to cope with our morning routine and after-school exhaustion.  In the morning, WJ became Captain Loophole, devising clever strategies to avoid the getting-ready-for-school tasks.  When we finally got out the door (and it was a miracle if we reached this point with no yelling), we began the Walk to My Certain Doom. Six blocks of whining, dawdling, complaining, questioning, tugging in the opposite direction, sometimes even crying. 

WJ then proceeded to have a perfectly lovely day at school.  He loved his teachers, his friends, exploring the materials, singing the songs, playing the games.  Everything from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM was pretty much golden.  He gave each day his very best.

But then his class walked down the stairs to the pick-up area and WJ immediately morphed into Mr. Crabby-Pants.  The three hours of sustained focus at school left him with no reserves.  And he saved his worst for me.

In the autumn, school was exhausting for WJ.   His resistance in the morning was a sign of things being a little overwhelming, a little too hard.  Again, not in terms of his cognition, but in terms of his stamina.  His inability to cope, the ease at which he dissolved into tears or spacey-ness, his continued long naps (which often lead to poor sleep at night—oh, the cycle!), his general afternoon malaise, these were all more signs that his school placement was not the strongest fit.

But then after the winter holidays, suddenly things would begin to change.  WJ got ready in the morning without the fight.  He would take his clothes into his room, wanting to surprise me with how quickly he could get ready alone.  We would have pleasant conversations on our walk to school.  His teachers would begin to talk about an increased energy and involvement in the classroom.  Our afternoons would become the stuff of a mother’s dream—reading together, cooking dinner together, minutes upon minutes spent playing happily alone while I read a magazine or got on top of my to-do list.

School was just a little too much in the fall but by winter it was a perfect fit.  If only schools began their programs in January.  Or even February—alleluia!  

But we are working within a well-established system.  And a year ago, as I thought about my child’s school experience, I was clear on this… I did not want for the beginning of every school year to be hard.  I did not want to live with a child who kicked into gear sometime before Valentine’s Day.  Plenty of experiences happen at school between September and January.  Who would want for her child to be struggling through the laying of the groundwork of the school year? Every school year?

It was instead my hope that WJ would meet each new school year with energy and strength.  And for that to happen, given the equation of his late summer birthday, the school calendar and its cut-off dates, and WJ’s unique cocktail of developmental growth, waiting a year to begin kindergarten seemed the best choice.

Stamina was one of the biggest reasons we decided to wait a year for WJ to begin a full-day kindergarten program.  (Other issues were at play as well, however, including physical and social development.  More on those in later posts.)

Stamina is a key consideration as you ponder the placement of your child in a school setting.  Stamina, physical and mental and emotional, does often increase with development and age in children. 

Is stamina an issue for your child?

*Note: If intelligence or cognitive functioning or a classifiable disability is an issue, most research actually points at not retaining a child.  Federal statutes protect children from being held back when another year in the same setting with no additional supports will not begin to skim the surface of the learning issues at work.  If you would like more information about protecting your child’s placement in a least restrictive environment, please go to IDEA.ed.gov.

Road signs

 

When I imagined life as a mother, I don’t think I understood the gravity of being the one making all of the significant decisions.  There are these moments we experience as parents when we seem to be living in some kind of Robert Frost inspired universe, standing at the fork in the road and trying to discern which path is best. 

We squint into the darkness, the haze and the fog, trying to force a vision of the future into being, searching for signs about which path is right.  Or which is wrong.  And the haze is hazier, the fog thicker, the light dimmer because the one bearing the weight of the consequences of these decisions is not ourselves, but the little people standing beside us on the road, clinging to our pant legs and asking pesky questions like: Where are we going now? What’s going to happen? Why? Should I be afraid?

Maybe what we are looking for as we peer out toward the future are road signs.  DO NOT ENTER would be helpful. WRONG WAY. CLEARLY THIS IS THE BEST CHOICE. There are no such signs for us.

As crazy as it seems, many of us are making decisions right now, in February, for school placement next fall.  For our family, the decisions this year are pedestrian compared to the weighty choices we faced at this time last year. 

A year ago we were debating the possibility of waiting a year to begin kindergarten despite WJ’s chronological age.  He would turn five before the cut-off date at our school and would qualify to enter kindergarten.  But the teachers and school director and even we, his parents, had questions about whether or not WJ was ready. 

I have been working this year to document the effects of our decision, which ultimately was to wait.  But many have asked that pesky question, Why?  Why did we decide to wait for kindergarten?  I would like to unpack that a little in the next few weeks.  The reasons were manifold and complicated.

But for now, I am wondering, what have been the toughest decisions you have been faced with on behalf of another?  How do you decide which road to travel?

Transition: part three

This week that is full of preparation for the celebration of Thanksgiving seems a good time to tie up the loose ends the story of WJ’s transition into his new class.  I confessed to you earlier how hard the beginning of this change was for me and provided a peek at another surprise along the way. But I also promised you the good news and here it is.  Very simply.

When I ask WJ what he likes about school, he says everything.  Sometimes I push and say, “But what parts are you favorites?”   His answer remains the same.  All of it; all parts of it; I like everything.  WJ is happy about school. 

I wish I had a lovely and poignant story to illustrate this for you.  But the truth is that the majority of this adjustment has been mundane.  WJ goes to school.  WJ enjoys school.  We, his parents, enjoy the growth we see in him and the room he has to develop.

WJ brought a gift for us home from school this week.  It was a Thankful Tree that he made in his preschool class.  The children each bedecked a branch with leaves cut from their tempera paintings.  The branch was rooted in a baby food jar filled with lovely rocks.  On small white cards tied to the limbs the teachers recorded the things for which the children would like to thank God. One of WJ’s cards reads: I am thankful for Mom and Dad.  Another offers: I am thankful for Grandma and Grandpa, Oma, and Pop.  The last says: I am thankful for my stuffed animals.

More has stayed the same than has changed for WJ this fall.  He loves all the same things.  School.  His teachers.  Making art.  Friends. His grandparents.  And his best imaginary pal, Doggie.

It has not been a time without questions or worries but none of it has been more than we could handle.  Those shaky times are so overshadowed by what is good.  It is like those early, rocky moments were the first leaves that fell from autumn’s trees.  They trickled down one at a time, largely unnoticed by passersby, and were one day covered by a deluge autumnal glory, by red and yellow, by orange and the occasional purple.  Those first leaves have already disappeared, fallen apart at the bottom of the piles.  They are already melting, turning back into the good soil down under the drifting coating of the beautiful leaves, down at the roots of the Thankful Tree.   

Transition: part two

When I started writing this piece about the transition in the first month of school for WJ as he stays in preschool despite his chronological age, I thought this was a story in two parts.  I think I am deciding that the story has three parts (at least).  I want to get to the good news.  There is good news.  But the bumps in the road are difficult to ignore.

Part Two of this story involves the Kindergartener’s enthusiasm about all things Kindergarten. 

We thought it, and still think it, important for WJ to have time with his friends from before.  We want for him to make new connections in his new class, but a handful of his old school friends are the ones he held hands with while lying on a blanket as four-month-olds who could not yet even turn to look at one another.  They are children with whom he has spent the vast majority of the days of these last years and we knew that his sense of normalcy depended partly on continued time to play with the friends with whom he is so comfortable.

One on one, these interactions are positive, just like old times.  But when two or more of his kindergarten friends gather together, the conversation tends to hover around one topic: Kindergarten.

The picture above is WJ trying to keep a stiff upper lip at our favorite sushi restaurant earlier this month.  What you don’t see in the picture is three of his former classmates, just to the right, all singing new songs they had learned together at school.  At first WJ watched and listened with great interest; he is a true lover of all things music.  But as they moved from verse to verse and from song to song (I may be exaggerating here), it became clear that WJ felt out of place.  His five-year-old social skills left him unprepared for successful maneuvering of a situation like this—inside jokes, you-had-to-be-there moments, secret handshakes and the like.

Here is where my protective mothering instinct rears her ugly head.

I emailed a little with a friend whose son is also spending another year in preschool.  She confirmed this pattern.  When her son had a play date with an old classmate, the classmate talked a lot about kindergarten.  I began to jump up to cry out with indignation, “Why can’t they just get over it already?  It’s only kindergarten!  What’s the big deal?”  But before I uttered such nonsense, my wiser friend offered some insight.  “I wonder if it might wear off a little as the school year wears on.  It's such a big transition that those kids are quite caught up in it.” 

Of course.  Kindergarten is a milestone.  It brings backpacks and lunchboxes, music class and gym, new games, new songs, new teachers, new learning.  And when I listened carefully to WJ’s friends, I heard that their kindergarten talk was not even just that.  When I listened hard, I heard a whisper of their knowledge of WJ and their affection for him. 

What are the two topics that surfaced most in the guess-what-else-happened-in-kindergarten conversations? Music class, first. (And how many times has WJ begged these children to be in his band when they would have rather been dancing princesses?) And secondly, the new and amazing fire facts showered upon them by Fire Fighter Ron who visited their class one afternoon of late.  (What is that under WJ’s bed?  Is that two huge baskets of fire fighter dress-up gear? And on his shelves?  The entire line of Playmobil rescue equipment?)  These friends really are just that.  WJ is not with them in class anymore, but there are times when they think of him and how much he would love the things they are doing.

They all, WJ as the preschooler who stayed and his friends as the newly crowned Kindergarteners, need some support in knowing how to come together peacefully.  WJ needs words and strategies for getting involved in the conversation or changing the topic when he feels left out.  His friends need to know that there are kind ways to tell him about the wonderful new experiences they are having and ways that are not so kind.  And when the waters grow difficult to navigate, they all need adults who will step in and gently guide them on the way.

Just this week, I worked nearby as WJ played with his Two Best Friends.  The two girls began to sing a song from school.  He said to them, “Remember? I don’t know that song.” And they graciously stopped. 

Then Friend One suggested that they play out the story of the magic fish.  WJ said, “Remember?  I don’t know that story.”  “Ok,” she said and she thought around for another idea.  Then she laughed. 

“WJ,” she teased, “You do know that story.  It is not from kindergarten!  It is from summer camp!  You were there!”  He chuckled.  “Oh, yeah!  I remember now!” 

There is still a Part Three (at least) to this story of the transition. But for now, I am thankful for old friends and the ways that they know you and the times they can grow with you.