Parenting #2: Drop-off Drama
New School Day 9
It is a Wednesday and we are one day out from the first two weeks of school being complete and Olive is crazy hair, puffy coat, two bags and one ice princess costume away from quitting.
“I am firm about this,” she says, “I’m not going in.”
“We have to go inside,” I say, “because I can not do this alone.”
“I can stay home with Dad, while he works, and do my painting.”
“No O, you can’t. You need other grown-ups to help you, like teachers.”
“They encourage you to try and keep going,” said Olive, as if it is the worst thing in the world.
“Well, that’s how you finished that puzzle,” I said, about the one from yesterday, the day that ended with her yelling that the bedtime snack I gave her “WAS NOT ENOUGH.”
I make some phone calls to other moms who answer because they are at home waiting for the tile guy, or don’t because, unlike me, they have jobs that start at 9am. I stand outside the car. I cry a little and watch the soap bubbles from the cleaning liquid flow off the handicap entrance and onto the street below.
“Do the letters flip around on you?” I asked in the car.
And she that they did. But maybe because I asked a leading question.
I am crying, I am telling her that this is just what we have right now and that I need her to go so that I can even have the time to know what is next.
“But my project," she says. “I’m worried I’m going to forget where I am with my project - I already forgot.” And I so, so, so know what it is that she means.
“I do not like school because I do not like writing,” she said last week, and it takes us until we are sitting in the office on the first floor, after a drag out fight outside the building with one of us screaming [not me! just saying!] mom, do not leave me, you have to wait, you’re being a bad mom, definitely loud enough for many people inside the building to hear, for me to learn the truth: that last week it was hard to complete the sentence: the cat ran on the mat because the lower case “a” looks like the lower case “e,” and it tripped her up. Fuck. Why did I ever try to teach her to write myself, and also fuck that private school for doing no writing of letters in Kindergarten and also fuck me for sending her there but just fuck me, in general.
Thankfully, I was late for early pick-up last week so I knew where the office was, and that the people inside are those kind hearted people who also know when kids are trying to pull one over on them.
“Can we use this bathroom” asked two kids who came in for a bandaid and had just left the room. Their heads are peeking back into the room and the secretary, GOD BLESS HER, who has also already texted the school social worker on our behalf says - “What’s wrong with the bathroom downstairs?” The kids say something about it and then she asks about the bathroom upstairs, and they say they do not know where it is. But then, like magic, commit themselves to finding it.
The school social worker has not gotten back, so the fabulous, Ms. A - whose official title is “senior clerk typist, but should probably be “saint,” goes to peek into O’s classroom, saying she thinks perhaps the kids are doing writing workshop, but she is not sure. When she comes back she says that yes, it is true, but that Ms. T says that Olive can sit at the peace table during workshop if she likes. This WORKS! We go together to the classroom and then Olive goes in, and gets help with her bag and I rush out right away before she needs me again because I am terrified that it will not stick.
I stand for a while with Ms. A in the hallway, who is asking me if I knew she was struggling and whether I had let the teacher know. I’m thinking about the letter I didn’t send and a new one that I won’t send.
She struggles with the start time and she struggles with the rules and she struggles with knowing who is OK to play with and why. She struggles with the noise at pick-up and with getting lost in the sea of kids. She struggles with staying in one place on the rug and with not being able to get up to get water. She does not struggle with the bathroom or finding it or remembering the names of kids or grown ups she’s curious about.
And now, or always, she struggles with letters.
“I’m dyslexic,” I had told Ms. A, in the office, while we waited for the social worker to call.
“When I went to school,” she had replied, “we just said: ‘Oh, that’s how you learn.’”
And later, in the hall, she reminds me, that it is only first grade and that they have still have plenty of time.
[At some point, last week, at drop-off, everyone is standing outside the edges of a box, in the yard, looking inward and I am doing the opposite. I’m in the inside looking out. I make eye contact with another mom who I’m clinging onto for dear life and move to the outside of the box, where she is standing, so I can look in. Then all the kids come galumphing toward us, up the steps, where they pass by our bodies, and don’t look at us both, and head into the classroom, with their teacher, Ms. T, who is a gem among gems. The friendliest smile. The cleanest of hair.]