The Preschool Disaster

Preschool started yesterday. It was a disaster. When I got there everything seemed fine enough, except the teacher I like so much wasn't there (some issue with her own daughter and her school). When I was finally ready to extricate myself there was all this hullabaloo - it was time to gather for the pledge of allegiance. Ok, Zachary began to look concerned, so I decided to stay. So we all gather in the hall for the pledge. Oh, another class isn't ready yet. Wait. Wait. Ok, now we're ready. We say the pledge, then I begin to walk back into the classroom, NO!!! We have to say the pledge to the Christian Flag. Ok, I don't know that one. Then we had to pledge to the Bible. Ok, I really don't know that one. Then we begin to disperse, but wait!!! We have to say the Lord's Prayer. Geez, but at least I know that one. Doesn't that seem like a bit much for 3 year olds?

So we go back into the classroom, I try to get Zachary engaged in an activity, but he's having none of that. I have to go (remember I had a Pilates client at 9:30) so I hand him to the woman who's filling in for the missing teacher and he buries his head in her shoulder and starts crying softly. It only makes it worse to linger, so I quickly left. I called when I got home (10 minutes later) and he was still crying, but they were hopeful. An hour later they called me and he was still crying and seemed inconsolable. I left immediately, leaving my poor (but thankfully understanding) client with a "ok, that's it for today." When I got there he was doing that grasping for air thing they do when they have been crying hard. I held him and comforted him, spoke briefly with the teacher about it, and we left. As soon as we pulled out of the parking lot, he perked up and said "I went to school. Now we get to go to Chic-Fil-A." That was what I told him before school, that we could have lunch there. I didn't know what to do, but proceeded to Chick-Fil-A anyway. We ate lunch and he played in the playroom for a while. Then we went home, he took a good nap, and the rest of the day was normal. We talked about school some, and it didn't upset him.

Today I lingered in bed. I did not want to get up and face this all over again. But I did get up, and I put on my happy face. We had a nice breakfast, chatting about school and how much fun he was going to have. On the way to school we passed the zoo, and I had a brilliant idea "Zachary," I said, "if you don't cry today at school we'll go to the Zoo and see the tigers after school!" He seemed to like that idea. We got there a little early so the teacher could spend some one-on-one time with him, but two other kids were already there. I set about trying to immerse his interest in some puzzles. He was okay, but when I went to say bye-bye he began crying. I let the teacher take him and I waited outside (out of sight) to see if he would calm down. I'm not sure what possessed me to think things might actually be better today, some irrational wave of positive thinking. He never did calm down, so I finally went back in to calm him. The teachers think I should stay in the classroom with him to help him get acclimated. Yeah, right. It's in their best interest to have another set of hands in there, and I get the feeling they just don't want to deal with another crying kid. But I stayed anyway. However, I did not let him sit in my lap and cuddle, I made him participate as much as I could. He would start to participate, but then he would start crying some, but he never let me out of his sight. Finally, after 2 hours of that, we left. Again, everything was fine once we walked out the door.

I'm awash in many emotions. I'm so so upset, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, and mostly I'm confused. I don't know what to do. I have all this conflicting advice, and I'm losing my warm fuzzy feelings about the place. There really aren't any other options for preschool in this area, unless I were to drive him 30+ minutes somewhere, and that's not a practical option. There are many things that have occurred to me regarding what I should have done to better prepare him for this. But I've beaten myself up enough about it and now need to come up with a plan. Of course I have no idea what it's going to be. This sucks.