Preschool Update

Jacob has now finished two successful weeks of preschool.

His first week started rough, which led to a decision to start him on half-days. Actually, the only rough day was Monday and, as we discovered, it was really only a rough hour. When I picked him up on Monday, he seemed happy and comfortable. The rest of his first week went very well.

His second week started on Tuesday because he was sick on Monday and we kept him home. We agreed to stay with half-days, but he stayed through lunch rather than to lunch. Although he began to resist going to school very strongly at home, he established a pattern of quiet acceptance and no longer cried at the gate.

By Thursday of week two, all fit-throwing ended and his comfort and happiness at the school and with teachers and other children improved each day.

Next week begins full days. Also, he will now arrive without pull-up diapers. He was not wet one time in his two full weeks (something that did not surprise us). Now that he has shown his discipline on toilet training, the school will allow him to shed the diapers. He has been trained for a long time here at home. In all honestly, we were worried their insistence on diapers would cause regression. We are so happy it did not.

We are very pleased with how this has developed. We were told at the beginning that we could expect to see him focus more at home because of the self-directed learning taught at the school, and that is absolutely correct. He has always had an intense focus, but he now will literally spend hours building bridges, roads or whatever else with blocks, crayons and even boxes. He has even started putting toys away on his own at home. That is very new.

Although it has been tough at times getting to this point, Jen and I are glad we stuck this out. We consider it important for him to attend preschool. Since we must have him tended to while Jen drives in to work, we insisted on it being at all-day preschool as opposed to day care.

Of course, our first option was what we've always done, but Jacob's new experiences will provide him something different and something we could not have provided. As an example, Jacob has already made his very first friend without influence from his parents.