Nurture for the Future

The Question of Sending a Toddler to School

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It has always been my intention to send Gavin to school only when he is old enough to attend kindergarten – which meant he wouldn’t have started going to school until he was about 4 or 5 years old.

Then I got pregnant.

The general advice was that I would need help. After assessing all the options, I finally agreed to send Gavin to school ahead of my original timeline for him. The rationale behind this being:

  • It would help to boost his social skills (the general consensus was that Gavin’s social skills were somewhat lacking).
  • It would help him learn to be more independent of me (the general consensus was that he was far too clingy to me for a child of his age).
  • It would give me more time to rest as the pregnancy progressed and I grew more and more tired.
  • It would offer Gavin a more interactive day considering I would be too tired to play all the active games with him and arrange all the activities that I used to do before getting pregnant.

Another reason might be for Gavin’s development, but since I have never felt Gavin’s development to be lacking, it didn’t seem to be a pertinent reason. If anything, I felt Gavin’s development had been progressing quite well through “home-schooling”.

N.B. I would like to state that the general consensus was not necessarily something I agreed with though I confess that I succumbed to the opinions of others for fear that I might be wrong. Personally, I have never felt that there was a problem with Gavin’s social skills or his independence or so-called lack of. To me, his social skills and state of independence (or dependence) seemed quite appropriate for a child of his age.

It was only the latter two reasons for sending Gavin to school that seemed to make sense to me. Whilst I am sure I could have managed Gavin at home throughout the pregnancy, it would have taken a lot more from me. I can definitely see a difference between the days when Gavin is off at school for half a day versus the days when he is at home for the whole day. I usually feel more tired when he is home for the whole day.

I am digressing… I recently read an article about the myth that preschool helps toddlers develop their social skills. Though the idea may appear to be quite logical and sound, the evidence is proving the contrary to be true. Instead of developing people skills, toddlers are coming home with more behavioural problems – increased rudeness, or whining, or aggression.

I noticed the exact same thing when Gavin started going to school. Roughly about the same time, he started becoming more whiny and difficult to handle. I attributed it to the development of the “Terrible Twos” but at the back of my mind I had always feared it might have had something to do with the increased exposure to children his age and the bringing home of bad habits he had observed from the other children. Further, the week he was home from school for the holidays, his behaviour seemed to improve – albeit the improvement was marginal, but it was still perceptible to my eyes. Reading the article on “The Dark Side of Preschool” has confirmed my worst fears.

One event that happened recently that really alarmed me was when Gavin was over at his godparents’ house playing with his godsister, godbrother and a friend of theirs. The friend was an 18 month old boy – very well behaved and very competent for a toddler that young. Both Gavin and the boy were interested in the same toy. Admittedly, I wasn’t really watching Gavin closely because he’s always been fairly good at his godparents’ house, but I chanced to glance at Gavin and I saw something that made me very uneasy.

What caught my attention was the fact that Gavin was looking at the boy with an odd look on his face. It wasn’t a benign look but it wasn’t exactly belligerent either. Then he brought his hand up over the head of the boy and I felt my heart leap into my throat. I was almost ready to jump out of my chair but when Gavin brought his hand down, it was more like the action of “patting”. Seriously, for a moment there it felt as if he was going to hit the boy. This wasn’t the only incident, hubby also told me later that he caught Gavin bullying the boy and he told Gavin off for it.

It was a real shock to me to see my normally rather well-behaved boy behaving in such a manner. Although others have brushed this off as normal toddler behaviour and something that all children have to learn to go through, I still can’t help but feel alarmed by it. I can only think of one trigger for it and it is called “school”. Now I find myself wondering: have I done the right thing by sending my son to school or was it a mistake?

That said, I must admit that going to school has had some positive influences on Gavin. Over the past couple of months he has been attending school, I have noticed a certain maturity in him that had not been present before he started school. However, I still find myself questioning whether that beneficial effect was worth the compromise of having him develop the bad habits.

Below: Gavin generally plays well with other kids and is normally quite gentle.

Babylicious

Read the second part to this blog post.

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Adjusting to School – Mum's Perspective

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One of the hardest part about sending Gavin to school was adjusting to the schedule and rearranging his sleep cycle.  The other part is the fact that he now spends a considerable portion of time away from me where  I don’t know what is happening except for what I hear from the teachers and a sometimes garbled version of events from Gavin.

Sometime back I wrote an article about the importance of being the primary caregiver to a child if you want to bond with him.  The main benefit of being the primary caregiver lies in the fact that you can learn so much more about your child just by spending most of the time with him.  It’s like working on a jigsaw puzzle and being able to see the whole picture as opposed to working on a part of the jigsaw puzzle without any idea what the whole picture looks like.

By being the one who always did everything for him, I learned to have a feel for what he likes and doesn’t like even without him telling me.  I understand the little intricacies of his behaviour that would otherwise be meaningless to me.

For instance, I know that if I want him to drink his Pediasure, I have to make it one teaspoon of Milo, three scoops of Pediasure and mix it with half water and half Dutch Lady full cream milk up to 300ml.  Any deviation from this mix and there’s no guarantee he will drink it.  I know that he will eat chicken Wan Tan Mee but not mince beef Wan Tan Mee.

I know that anything made with a base of chicken stock is usually favoured by Gavin and that “the noodles with fork and the spoon” means Maggi mee cup noodles.  “Purple” refers to the grape flavoured Vitagen but it can also mean other things that are coloured purple.  “Strawberry” can be strawberry jam on bread or it can be strawberry yoghurt or strawberry ice cream.  I knew that “Ack” meant “Ah Kong” and “Ahm” was  “Ah Mah” back in the days when he was into abbreviating everything.

All these little idiosyncrasies are things I learned because I was the person that spent the most time with Gavin.

Since Gavin started going to school, it feels as if I can only see part of the picture.  Suddenly, there are changes in my son that I can’t understand.  They catch me off-guard because I’m suddenly confounded by what it all means.  I need to listen more carefully to the things that Gavin says and try to decipher the meaning as he tumbles over his words in his excitement to tell me what happened.

Recently, Gavin got hit at school.  When I picked him up from school, he had a red mark on his eyebrow.  Before I could say anything, he launched into an enthusiastic explanation of what happened at school.  As far as I could decipher, his cousin hit him and he had to put ice on his head and lie down.  As to why she hit him, he said it was because he had “disturbed” her.

My initial thought was to assume it had all been some accident and his cousin had hit him by mistake.  These things are common when children play.  In their excitement, they are often unaware of where their limbs are flailing. I found out the next day after asking one of the adults at school what really happened.

Gavin adores his cousin and often tries to hug her.  Being the older and bigger child who is unaware of his strength, he has a tendency to bowl her over.  She grew tired of always falling over when Gavin tried to express affection and, not having the words to tell him she didn’t like it, she hit him.

I have realised how important it is to get the story right so that I can tell Gavin the right things.  Had I assumed it had been an accident, I would have told him that his cousin hadn’t meant to hit him and that it was all just an accident.  That would have done nothing to correct his behaviour around her.  Knowing what really happened, helped me explain to him why she hit him and how he should behave around her in future to avoid future conflict.

One thing that I did notice after the incident at school was that Gavin “went off” school for a bit.  After his terrific adjustment back to school post-holidays, he began his protests about going to school again.

It is inevitable that a child will eventually have to go to school and there will be a lot of things will happen that we, as parents, won’t know about.  Some of your child’s experiences at school will be good and some will be bad.  I believe that having developed a strong bond with your child from birth helps you to manage such difficult situations and help your child cope with these  experiences.

When your child trusts you, he will talk to you about the things that upsets him rather than bottling it up or speaking to the “wrong” people about it.  That is exactly the kind of relationship I am working to build with my son.  I might not always be able to detect that there is a problem but if he trusts me enough, he will come to me with his problems before I have to ask him about it.

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Back to School

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After a long week off school, Gavin was back to school earlier this week.  As we predicted, he was not at all happy to be back.  The first day was probably the worst – we had a renewal of the crying, although not quite as bad as the earlier days of school.  The second day was much improved, although it might have had something to do with the fact that he was wearing his “Thomas uniform“.

I have been trying hard to assess Gavin’s reaction to school which seems to be rather mixed.  Every morning, we face the same reaction – he’ll always protest that he doesn’t want to go to school (although the protests seem to get weaker and weaker as the week progresses).  Yet, he often looks happy and babbles enthusiastically about school when I pick him up.  I find it rather confounding – does he like school or doesn’t he?

Perhaps the mixed reactions have something to do with the fact that his favourite teacher and best friend have been in and out of school of late?  I’m afraid I haven’t been keeping track of when they have been at school and how it relates to Gavin’s reaction towards school to make any conclusions, though.

The other possibility is that he just isn’t a morning person and doesn’t like anything in the morning. After all, I don’t think I’m a morning person and often don’t feel like doing a lot of things until I’ve warmed up sufficiently.  Does Gavin take after me?  Possibly.  All I can say is that his favourite teacher is back at school and he appears to be settling down quite well, post-holiday.

Yesterday, out of the blue, he started reciting a song he learned at school.  I’d never heard it before and he told me teacher R taught it to him.  It was a cute little rhyme that went something like this:

“I have a little turtle, his name was Tiny Tim.
I put him in the bath tub to see if he could swim.
He drank up all the bubbles and ate up all the soap.
And then he went to bed with a bubble in his throat!
Bubble, bubble, bubble – POP!”

And there I was thinking he never did anything or learned anything at school except play and eat…  I suppose this is another good sign that he is enjoying school or he wouldn’t be bothering to listen to his teacher, would he?

Then this morning, there was no fuss as he put on his “Thomas Uniform” again.  When he got into the car and asked where we were going, I replied, “Where do we go every morning?”

“To school?”  He asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

I braced myself for a fuss but none came.  He seemed quite amenable to the idea of going to school and never once uttered a protest about going.  So perhaps the earlier reaction this week was simply the post-holiday back-to-school blues.

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The Difference a Teacher can Make

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After the agreement to switch Gavin to the class with his favourite teacher, I expected this morning to run a little more smoothly.  I was surprised to hear Gavin protesting about going to school again.

In the car on the way to school, I asked him, “Gavin, do you like teacher R?”

He nodded.

Then I told him teacher R was at school and if he went he could see her.  Again he protested about going to school.

It finally occurred to me that although the principal and I had agreed to permanently move him to his favourite teacher’s class, we hadn’t officially  told him he would be in that class.  In his mind, yesterday’s experience in her class was a one off event and he had no way of knowing that he would be in that class again today.

After I explained to him that he was going to be in his favourite teacher’s class, he perked up remarkably and there were no further protests about going to school again.

It is amazing what a difference it made to Gavin being in a class with a teacher he likes.  He appears to participate in activities more and doesn’t seem to mind being with the class (instead of insisting on sitting on the outskirts like he did previously).  He even told me what he did at school besides eat.

I suspect that Gavin likes teacher R because she’s the one with all the Thomas and Friends stuff.  In the car, we were debating how many wheels James had.  In the end, I told him to ask teacher R when he got to school.  When he spotted her at the entrance to the school, he ran up to her and was so excited he could barely get his question out coherently.

I asked him to say “hello” to all his teachers including teacher M, whom he didn’t like.  That was when he stopped, hesitated and disintegrated into tears.  Suddenly he didn’t want to be at school any more and didn’t want to say “goodbye” to me.  It was hard to figure out what happened.  I don’t know if it was the realisation that I was about to leave or if it was the uncertainty about being in teacher M’s class again because I asked him to say “hello” to her.

I guess we’ll have to play it out further to see how things go.  At any rate, it’s good to see that we’ve made good progress and that he’s developing a bond with at least one of the teachers at school.

It has been said that Gavin is too shy and attached to me and often rebuffs strangers, however, in my experience, I’ve noticed that he is just a little slow to warm up.  When given the time, he does bond with others.  Aside from teacher R, he seems to have developed quite a bond with the waiter at his favourite restaurant as well.

Below: Gavin with Chloe – one of his friends that he doesn’t see very often because she lives overseas.  Despite that, he gets along with her like a house on fire whenever they meet.

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A Pro-active Toddler

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I went to school a little earlier to pick Gavin up today so that I could have a private chat with the principal before taking Gavin home.  My intention was to speak to the principal about moving Gavin to the class with the teacher he felt more comfortable with.  To my surprise, when I arrive, I discovered that Gavin had already moved himself to the class  that he preferred.

According to the principal, Gavin went over to the class with the teacher he liked and refused to go back to his own class.  Since he was happier in that class she let him stay there.

I used to be a little concerned that Gavin was a little too timid and might be a pushover when he started to go to school.  After this little incident, it looks like he knows how to handle himself and defend his own interests.  It’s good to know that he doesn’t just accept things for the way that they are, but takes the initiative to change them if he doesn’t like it.  Of course that also spells a rather willful child with its own set of issues, but that’s another story altogether.

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Toddlers and School Uniforms

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Although Gavin has been adjusting well to school, there is still one slight problem we keep encountering: wearing his school uniform.

There are two school uniforms at Gavin’s playschool – the sports uniform, which looks like this:

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It is usually worn on Tuesdays and Thursday.  Gavin has no issues wearing this uniform.

Then there is the formal school uniform, which looks like this:

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This is worn on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  For some reason, Gavin hates it.  Not the shorts, just the top.

You might be wondering how we managed to get him into the top for this photo…  Well, you can see from his expression in the photo that he didn’t like it one bit.  He even attempted a hunger strike to protest against wearing the uniform.  Unfortunately for him, breakfast happened to be his all-time favourite noodles – Wan Tan Mee – and his will power lost out to his taste buds.

At first we couldn’t determine whether it was the shirt that he didn’t like, the fact that it wasn’t Thomas and Friends or that it signified having to go to school.  Now that he seems willing enough to go to school and that he doesn’t mind wearing his sports uniform, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is simply the shirt that is the problem.

Ever since Gavin was little, he has never liked button-down shirts.  Every single button down shirt we have tried to make him wear has been met with resistance.  Back then, it was simply a matter of offering him something else to wear.

Unfortunately, no other kid seems to have a problem wearing the school uniform – except mine.

I’ve been pondering over the problem and have come up with the following solution:

Iron on Thomas

It is an iron-on Thomas and Friends applique that I found on eBay that I intend to stick onto his school shirt.

What do you think?  A winning idea?

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