I knew that she would be exhausted from going to full day kindergarten for 5 days in a row. She is most definitely not a morning person, so I knew it would be hard to get her up in the mornings. She's had some fears this summer that I thought might creep into her kindergarten routine. And she's naturally a worrier. But wow! This is so much harder than I thought it would be.
One of the days she was so nervous to go to PE she couldn't even talk about it. She can't do a somersault and she was just sure that she was going to have to do somersaults in PE. We tried to explain to her that they would probably play games and do a lot of different things. She couldn't even consider that.
Another day she kept telling me that something happened on the bus and that she didn't want to tell me about it because she was just going to deal with it herself. You can imagine where my mind went with this! After a whole lot of working to get it out of her, she finally told me that she was nervous to ride the bus because the neighbor boy waved to her in a certain way when they got off the bus and it made her embarrassed. Keep in mind that this is the same neighbor boy that was in her picture on the first day of school and who she plays with all the time.
Remember how I said that once or twice a month Esme will wake up saying that she thinks she's going to throw up? Well, this week she has done that every single day and its escalated each day. It's entirely nerves. She refuses to eat breakfast and the one morning I actually forced her to eat something??? She promptly threw it up. This morning, she refused to come out of the bathroom because she was crying so much saying that she was sure she was going to throw up, that she hates school, and doesn't want to go. On top of that, she hasn't really been eating her lunch, she's not hungry when she gets home half the time. This is just miserable for her.
I just can't believe that my little girl; the one who loved preschool, who is already reading, who is practicing multiplication with my nieces; hates school. How can this be?
I talked to her teacher today and she had a talk with Esme. Esme told her that she didn't like riding the bus and Esme also said that to my mom and to Aaron. But when I asked her about it, it didn't sound like it was a huge thing. She says that she hates PE, she doesn't really like any of the things she's doing at school, doesn't like to make new friends and that the only good part is recess.
Now I can tell you that I think some of this is malarky. We were working on her homework last night and she loved it. When I ask her something specific like "What did you do for math today?" she will tell me what she did - today was sorting buttons. She could sort them any way she wanted and she chose to sort them by the numbers of holes that they had. When I asked if she liked that she said yes! Plus, there's an optional Spanish class that starts next month where one day a week they stay an extra hour to learn Spanish. She immediately asked to do it and is still super excited about it. So she likes learning.
One thing that is interesting and worries me is that she says that she can't hear Mr. Fisher (PE teacher) and that all day she feels like she forgets everything right away. In the past, when she has done swimming and soccer - she always looks at Aaron and me (or my parents or whoever else is there) to make sure that she's doing a good job. While she's doing that - the coach or instructor is usually giving instructions that she's missing because she's looking at us. Then she says "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing" and gets all worked up about it. I imagine that is what's happening at school also. I think her little brain is so worried that she can't get herself to listen or pay attention to what's being said. So of course she can't hear or remember. Uffda.
Where we are now is that we are going to put a picture of our family in her backpack that she can look at anytime that she wants to. We're going to practice listening by looking at the teacher/instructors face while they are giving instructions so that our eyes can help our ears. Also, we're going to work on trying to wait 3 seconds until after someone is done talking to respond. That is mostly because she is interrupting us a lot to answer things before she's even heard what we want her to do. And finally, if she is good with going to school in the mornings Monday through Thursday, I will drive her to school on Friday and my parents will pick her up so that she doesn't have to ride the bus.
I sure hope that will help. I just hate seeing her so miserable. Stay tuned...
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