Transitions and behavior

We have survived the first week of transition into pre-K. And it was just that -- survival.

This has been a bit of a hectic week to begin with because it started off with us on vacation for the Labor Day holiday. Then the pre-K teacher (Miss J) was on vacation for two days, so the first "real" day for my daughter to be with her teacher was on Thursday. Work was a bit hectic this week due to a project I was working on, and on Thursday I arrived to pick up the kids with maybe 1 minute to spare.

The director was waiting for me as she had to talk to me about something that happened.

Evidently, my daughter, the very imaginative one, is very fanciful with everyone. She had told the director (who is mom to one of my daughter's pre-K classmates) that something occurred in the classroom, with lots of "ums" thrown in, and that a certain person did something to her (keeping names out of this for this blog), and then when the director asked if it really was that person, my daughter changed the name to another person. So, the director told me about it, because "you never know" if it is really true or if it is the whole imagination thing going on.

I talked to my daughter about it several time on Thursday night -- no pressure, just a few minutes here and a few minutes there, over a few hours, and I tried to get a sense of what she had told the director AND what had happened during the day.

It was a whole new set of people doing a whole new set of things.

So -- I spoke with Miss J Friday morning at drop-off and asked her to talk to the director and then give me a call sometime during the day when she had a few minutes. Miss J called me in the afternoon -- she told me the set of events that happened both yesterday AND today. Yes, a whole new set of people. She also said that the entire CLASS is doing this sort of thing right now -- and it is like the entire CLASS has regressed to the stuff of 2 year olds; i.e. hitting, kicking, etc. Miss J and I had a good conversation about all this (20 minutes or so) and we're going to borrow some books from the library (that we have read before, actually) on feelings and playing with others, etc.

The "lying" part is actually less a problem for me right now because I think that 4 year-olds don't quite get it yet. (And the experts at ParentCenter seem to agree!) The behavior stuff, though, concerns me. We have been working with my son on not kicking, not hitting, etc. -- all the stuff burgeoning 2 year-olds do. So I guess we'll read the books together as a family as they both can benefit.

Ass Miss J said to me yesterday -- if the children won't behave, she can't teach them anything in the classroom. And if parents do not keep up the consistency at home, they won't behave during the day.