Bullying. Separation anxiety. Food strikes. Potty accidents. Exhaustion. Crying nonstop.
These are the things I worried about when I packed up the 3 1/2-year-old and 4-month old and shipped them off to school.
Would they make friends? Would they be able to keep up with the bigger kids? Would someone be generous with the hugs and kisses and comforts if they were sad? Would they find the potty OK? (Not so worried about that with the infant.) Would we be separated from each other by some sort of natural—or man-made—disaster? (Irrational? Hell yes, but a worry nonetheless.)
I did NOT know that I needed to worry about someone taking home Little's jacket, which was hanging on the hook beneath her cubby this morning and was nowhere to be found this afternoon.
Nor did I realize I needed to worry that Big would end up wearing home someone else's SOCKS and SHOES (???).
BOTH ON THE SAME DAY!
They don't teach you this in Parenting 101. Maybe I have to wait for the advanced class...
4 comments:
My favorite is when they come home with "accident" reports and can't reveal who the "biter" or "hitter" or "stealer" is. They always assured us we'd appreciate that policy when our daughter turned into the biter, hitter or stealer. Somehow that never made me feel any better...
being a working parent is always a balancing adt...sometimes other parents are not quite as clued in and no offense to the dads, but I see a lot of dads picking up and htey don't always seem as tuned into what jacket is their child's!
That rule never made sense to me. I'm guessing if my daughter started biting someone--or everyone--I'd be running up to parents left and right apologizing on her behalf! At the very least because if the victim is a talker, he/she is blowing my kid in anyway, and then it would look like we were trying to cover it up!
I must raise my hand and admit I grabbed the wrong jacket one day. I brought it back, though. You learn to be a little flexible on the ownership rules once childcare enters the picture, for sure.
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