Preschool

In 2007, when the truck fell into our house, I was forced to put Makena into day care/preschool to have some time to focus on the reconstruction. This did not go well for her at all. She was aggressive and territorial and bit or clobbered any child that threatened her space. She was also going through the added disruption of having moved to temporary lodging with her stressed-out parents and this just meant too many changes and little stability for her. Compounding her frustrations were her speech delay and her nanny leaving us without any notice. Ugh.

It was so hard for me to see her struggle to claim some control over her life that I pulled her from preschool after two months and decided to keep her home with me through the construction. I knew in my gut that I wouldn't even try to put her in a school for another year, until after her third birthday. What I should have done in hindsight, is put her name on a preschool waiting list so that I could re-enroll her locally when that time came.

Since I happen to live in a small chichi surfing town, I blew it. All the preschools that appealed to me had a waiting list of a year to a year and a half when I went looking for one last December. I was stunned. And since all my friends have children enrolling in middle schools this year, I didn't know anyone who could help me get her in locally. Pathetic.

Just when I thought that I might have to (gulp) homeschool Makena, a mom whose daughter had attended the first preschool Makena had, called me for a playdate. Her daughter, a year later, still talked about Makena. She wanted to know if I would arrange a play date for our daughters to reconnect. I was thrilled. A little nervous for her daughter but thrilled none the less. The girls hit it off right away and found that dressing up as princesses was something they could do together so the reunion was a success.


Better yet, this woman proved to be a source of valuable information. She introduced me to an occupational therapist and to the preschool Makena now attends. She dropped out of the sky like an angel for me.

I had Makena evaluated and the OT explained that Makena was a high-toned, visual learner, which meant that she was ahead of the curb with regard to her physical abilities (I knew that.) and that she learned by watching more than by being told. (I didn't know that.) She gave me some exercises to do with her, told me to be Makena's interpreter when it came to her interaction with other children and told me to schedule more play dates and to keep them very short so that they would be successful and leave her wanting more of them. We did that for about six weeks until it was deemed that Makena would be ready to interact with a larger number of children in a school setting.

I enrolled Makena in the preschool that this woman ran, on the spot. I was number one on the waiting list (as opposed to number fifty-six) and although this preschool isn't even in our city, I believe that the half-hour drive there and back is worth every minute Makena spends there. The best part is that more than half the school is full of neighborhood kids and the other half is comprised of children that have some special needs that range from mild to severe. Bonus: any one of those needs can be addressed at the school, if they become an issue. But what makes this an even more enriching experience ultimately, for Makena, is that she isn't the only Asian child in an all-white school anymore. The children and staff she plays with three day a week are a rainbow of ethnicities. I think that on some level it makes her feel part of the group as opposed to an outsider.


She has now been there two months and we haven't had a single bitting episode. Yes, she has clobbered a couple of children, but she has also been clobbered! She hasn't once said that she didn't want to go to school. She looks me in the eye when I leave in the morning and she runs to hug me when I pick her up. Her vocabulary is flourishing and her speech is catching up, as well. And her teacher e-mails me a daily report and photographs of her at play. I couldn't ask for anything more. It took a while to get here but now that we are, this is the pie in the sky.

Now, all I have to do is figure out where Jack will be attending middle school next year. Hopefully, I can have two children schooled in the same city.

Isabelle