I registered Eric for kindergarten again with a vague sense of déjà vu. Some of it was familiar (I still had the same folder with the paperwork from last year), but everything else seemed different. I felt much more relaxed and confident that Eric was going to be ready. And he would be starting kindergarten with an IEP — an Individual Education Program. Basically it meant that Eric had special needs and it was up to the school to meet those needs. He still needed to be reassessed to determine how much extra help he would receive.
I had mixed feelings about him qualifying for help. Of course I wanted him to get help. I just didn’t want him to need help.
I was hesitant about pulling him out of class for resources. It seemed to me that since he was getting great individual help at Speech once a week, then he didn’t need to miss any time in the classroom. Wasn’t that really the best place for him to learn? Would there be a stigma of being different?
I still didn’t know exactly what his learning difference entailed. Maybe he would outgrow it.
It’s like some of his brain connections were bridges that were never built and we needed to create detours.
We were doing all the right things for Eric, but it wasn’t happening fast enough for me. I was trying to be patient. I had such a hard time slowing down, and that did not work well with Eric who was slow to respond. Eric has always had only two time frames: now and not now. It was a fine line to walk between motivating him and not getting ahead of himself because he was so easily frustrated.
I loved the long days he was in school. His teachers handled him really well. We were all relieved that he finally had other adults besides his parents who understood him. His new preschool setting was a great atmosphere full of music art and play. Eric was getting more confident everyday. The other boys were as wild as Eric, each with their own self-control issues.
Eric’s best friend was a biter. After drop off, I noticed a note in Eric’s cubby. I was in the office talking to a few other moms when I opened the envelope to find an apology letter from his friend admitting that biting Eric “was not a good thing to do” and that he still wanted to be his best friend.
Just then, his friend was bought in to the office crying. He had bitten Eric again.
The teacher asked if I wanted to go check on Eric, but when I found out he wasn’t upset, I decided to wait till later. I hadn’t even heard from him about the first bite.
When I greeted Eric, I asked how his day went.
“Fine.” He appeared more interested in his snack I brought than talking.
“Nothing happened?”
He slowly put his arm behind his back while eating his cheese stick with his left hand.
“What?”
We got to the car.
“Did D. bite you?”
“What?”
I took his arm and found a small mark.
“Buddy, nobody is in trouble. But you need to tell me about stuff like this.”
“It’s fine!” I half expected him to say: “It’s just a flesh wound!”
Eric was more worried about his friend getting in trouble than anything else. I actually wasn’t upset. Neither bite had broken the skin. They were more like hickeys. I felt for Eric’s buddy, who felt worst of all. This was just a new opportunity to talk about appropriate behavior and how to find the right way to communicate.
But best of all, Eric had made a friend!
Read more from the Kindergarten Chronicles.
