#13 – Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1

When school daze bring(s) out all the feelings for young kids … and their parents

When you drop him off, everyone said, don’t linger. Give a quick hug and a kiss, tell him you’ll be back to pick him up later, and go. So we did that, Young Kid’s mom and I, when we dropped him off for his first day of preschool. And all seemed fine until we got to the parking lot, when she said, “I can hear him screaming ‘Mommy.’”

As we would learn from the teachers, he was screaming for several minutes, which he described to us later as “I was melting down a lot.”

The second day was worse. He cried when it was time to get in the car. He clung to his mother’s shirt so tight at the school he needed to be pried off. More screaming. He vowed he was going to spend the year at home.

Nowhere to go but up, I suppose.

The whole concept of school is wild and kinda arbitrary, when you think about it. From the time you’re born, you’re learning stuff—language, touch and feel, colors, smells, tastes, the black hole of children’s television. Usually this is done at home, or for some, in day care. Then, one day, the learning shifts to a formalized format. Whether the school is private or public, religious or secular, you go to a new place with a bunch of your peers and you learn structured lessons at the same rough pace that they do from people you’ve never met.

Your own learning, of course, does not cease. Now, though, you’re learning things like social cues and waiting your turn and how much finger paint you need to cover an entire piece of paper—and how to be away from home, and the people you feel most secure around.

YK saw this day coming from a long way off this summer, and with more anxiety than we realized at first. A longtime lover of school buses, he asked if he would be getting on one.

“No, buddy. You won’t be riding the bus for a few more years. Mommy or Daddy will take you to school and then pick you up.”

“You can stay with me, right?”

“No, we can’t stay, but you’ll have lots of other kids to play with.”

(Cue the lip quivering)

So we took it easy on the preschool talk for most of the summer, but the damage had been done. His potty training, which had gone fairly well for the previous few months, regressed A LOT, to the point where he was filling up his diaper rather than the potty out of protest. In his mind, if he didn’t poop in the potty, he wouldn’t have to go to school. He also went from clingy to super-clingy, losing his little mind if he couldn’t hold your hand or climb into your lap every two minutes. We knew, or at least figured strongly, it was the dread of being away from Mommy and Daddy, but what could we do about it, other than wait for the big day to arrive?

Long-term, I’m not worried. YK already does, with tremendous enthusiasm, 90 percent of the stuff one does in school—reading books, singing songs, crafting crafts, building and immediately destroying things, climbing on any sort of playground equipment—and he genuinely loves other people, particularly kids. The separation anxiety piece is the elephant in the room. On the one hand, it’s heartening and flattering to know that he insists upon my company. On the other, unless or until we decide to move to a remote mountain cabin and subsist on wild mushrooms and rabbits (not a wholly ridiculous idea these days), society demands that he spends increasing amounts of his time away from home and his parents, much of it at school. Sure, the meltdowns aren’t fun for anyone, but I don’t want him quietly sitting and stewing and missing us and not concentrating on what he’s doing and what he can learn from the teachers and students around him, either.

A week before YK’s first day, I had another first day of the college journalism class I teach as an adjunct, and the parallels were few yet notable. I ran through the syllabus and asked the students for a bit of information about themselves, and the looks I got back were the looks of people who didn’t yet know quite what to make of me and how much trust they should put forth. Because I’ve taught this class for several years, I knew that in a couple of weeks, they’ll know me better and feel more at ease and able to concentrate on the work. Now, those students have more than a dozen years of schooling behind them, whereas YK is still trying to wrap his sharp little mind around the entire process. But in a few weeks, he too will be less nervous and more trusting and his focus will be less on being without us and more on playing with his buddies or—once his ultra-competitive instincts kick in—completing tasks, whether that’s cutting paper with scissors or, God willing, a successful trip to the bathroom.

Then, his parents can focus on finding out what skills he’s learning and trying to build on them, making sure he’s listening to his teachers, and wiping the snot from his nose after he picks up the first of the 27 colds he’ll have this year (he picked up No. 1 the first week, complete with a 102-degree fever). Before we know it, two-day-a-week preschool will be three-day-a-week preschool, then kindergarten, then grade school, then middle school, then driving, then college, then years of student loan payments … it’ll go quickly, and someday we’ll look back on the Day One meltdown with a sad smile and remember how needed we were, how much he feared something that he came to love, or at least tolerate.

Forgive me, then, if I want to linger here awhile, in this exhausting but intoxicating time and place where I am needed (to an almost unhealthy extent) and admired and wanted as a play companion and a comforting arm around the shoulders. The years ahead are going to take YK further and farther away from me, and even if I want that, for him to see the world and show it his intelligence and charm and iron will, I can already sense the wistfulness that will come from looking back on and missing these simple days where he craves—in addition to the eight snacks he won’t finish—my presence and my attention. I know he’ll grow to love (or at least tolerate) school. I just need to remind myself he can still love coming home, too.