Preschool

As part of Jack's therapy regimen, we are visited once a week by a behavioral therapist. She recommended that Jack start a "center-based" program (i.e., preschool) in order to get used to more social interaction.

When this was first proposed, I felt very conflicted. I still am. Tom and I had agreed long ago that we were going to start Jack in preschool a year before he was scheduled to start kindergarten. In other words, we were planning to send him a year from now, and that was what I was emotionally prepared for. To have the time frame suddenly move up a whole year has been a shock to my system.

After all, I reasoned, we see other kids almost every day. It's not like he's not getting the social aspect. We have his whole life for him to be around children we don't know, whose parents we don't know, from whom he will pick up who knows what. I imagine him coming home from preschool making his fingers into a gun and shooting at me or saying sassy things like, "You're not the boss of me" (both, by the way, anecdotes from other mommy friends whose children started preschool). Right now, it's nice that I know all his friends. If he's already so anxious around kids he knows when I'm around, how much harder will it be for him with kids he doesn't know without me there? And he's still so little.

The other thing is leaving your child with anyone, much less someone you don't know at all, is always a leap of faith. And it just wasn't a leap I was prepared to make at this point in Jack's life. I know no caregiver could ever love him as much as I do. The sad thing about parenthood that I've come to realize that it is all a process of letting go. I'm not so naive as to think that I can keep him only mine forever, but surely three years wasn't too much to ask?

I talked all this over with the therapist. She told me the difference between preschool and our playdates now is that in preschool Jack would in a setting where all the kids know the same rules with an adult who is trained to handle these behaviors. Our therapist clearly knows her stuff and is very experienced, but the one thing she lacks is the understanding that comes with having kids of her own. While what she was saying made intellectual sense to me, it still didn't put my fears and doubts at ease. But I didn't want to dismiss her recommendations out of hand, so I went ahead and scheduled a walk-through at the preschool.

Still, I agonized about it. Meanwhile, Jack decided he would make my decision a little easier for me. He was an absolutely nightmare last week. On one hand, I couldn't imagine leaving my baby with someone else. On the other hand, I was ready to sell him to the highest bidder. By the end of the week, I told Tom I didn't care if that preschool made him sew women's clothing, he was going.

Our observation at Jack's preschool was yesterday. It's a two-hour a day program, and he'd be going twice a week. When I first walked into the classroom, I was a little shocked to see so many children running around, and it was still five minutes until the start of the class. I asked the teacher if that was all the kids there were going to be, and she said, no, more were coming. My heart sank.

There are several entities involved in Jack's treatment. The coordinating entity is the San Diego Regional Center. The preschool program is run through the Arc of San Diego. The preschool itself is affiliated with a local Christian church, which was also giving me pause about the program. Not that I have a problem with a Christian-based church - on the contrary, the preschool we had planned on sending Jack to in a year would be through our church - but I wanted to be the one to decide who would be teaching and what would be taught to our child about God. The fact that the location, curriculum, and everything about Jack's first preschool experience were being dictated by someone else and not carefully chosen by Tom and me was also something that really bothered me.

The class started off with a short snack time. After that, I was relieved to see most of the children leave the room. The head teacher in charge said that the Arc program mostly has the room to themselves, but that the larger preschool classes rotate in for snacktime and circle time, just to give the Arc kids a chance to interact with more children. Otherwise, it is a lot of structured group and independent play. The largest child to teacher ratio is 3:1, with six kids to two teachers.

While we were discussing this, Jack was exploring the room, playing with toys, and meeting the different kids. Just as the head teacher began to tell me that it might be a good idea for me to slip out for the rest of the session so that they could see how Jack did without me there, he got into a little tussle with another boy. It escalated into Jack throwing one of his typical temper tantrums. I figured I would observe how the teachers handled it. The most brutal part of this was that Jack saw me watching from across the room and he was calling for me to help. But I knew that it would be counterproductive for me to interfere, so I stayed back.

I finally ended up slipping out in the middle of this tantrum, but I stayed outside the door to see how it would be resolved. I hate slipping out without saying goodbye. I feel that in most cases that will only make Jack more clingy, because he won't ever know if I'm just leaving the room for a second or if I am leaving for a significant amount of time. I can understand why it was necessary in this case, but it's actually the first time I've ever done it. Anyway, as I peeked through the doorway, I could see and hear Jack still crying while a teacher tried to talk to him. She rubbed his back and held him close and finally he joined the other children in circle time. When I finally stopped watching, he was sitting on the teacher's lap in the circle, looking still sad but quiet.

When I came back, Jack looked happy to see me but not like he had been traumatized by my leaving him there. The head teacher told me that she thought it would be good if Jack started in an afternoon program next week. The good thing about that class is that there would be only one other child there, so Jack would have a lot of attention. He'd still get the social interaction of the other child plus the other preschool kids, but the teacher would be able to work with him closely to help him with his issues. She said that it was good for us to start him so young, because his anxiety wouldn't be likely to get better as he got older. It was good to start early to try to help him cope. I mean, what else would she say? But it did make me feel better.

So the plan for now is for us to start Jack on a two day a week, two hour a day program. We'll keep a close watch on Jack's progress, but I have to admit that the prospect of four hours a week all to myself is a little exciting. It's even better that it's free. But the one thing that decided it for me is after we got in the car, I asked Jack if he had fun, he said yes. When I asked him if he wanted to go back, he said yes. We'll see how it goes in the upcoming weeks, for both him and me.