Good-bye My Little Preschooler, Hello Little Girl

Today I sat and held a squirming preschooler, her bony sit bones stabbing into my thighs, for the last time.

Tomorrow morning E1 will walk with her mom into a kindergarten classroom and cast aside the title of preschooler. It's a momentous day.

In many ways sending my oldest grandchild off to school is a bigger deal than when my firstborn started school. The children's mother had been in an organized preschool for a couple of years or maybe longer. She'd already been navigating the society of kids her age for a long time. I'd been leaving her with sitters since she was six weeks old.

For most of her life I'd been trusting someone else with her well being a portion of the time. I had to work. Her grandparents worked. Family care was not an option.

So school for my little girl was just a different place and different people. It was walking in on her own and learning new lessons.

She also was closer than she had been at preschool. If she were sick, or, God forbid, had a splinter she wouldn't let the school nurse touch, most of the time I was just a few blocks away. Working at the local newspaper I knew the people at her school and was in and out on a regular basis long before she sat foot in the doors. It wasn't a new place to me either.

Besides there had never been a school shooting, bullies didn't pick on cute little girls, and the world felt like a safe place.

Now two and a half decades later, school isn't always a safe haven of learning and growing. I've seen girls in preschool gymnastics already huddling in the snobby little cliches their mothers probably inhabited. Random gunmen have killed small children in schools more than once. And unlike my own children, E1 hasn't been thrust into someone else's care for much of her childhood.

She's been with her parents and grandparents -- people who love her and would die for her, people who always have her best interests at heart, people who try to protect her from the unsavory bits of life as long as possible. (Yes, all right, she's been with me a lot of the time and I'll miss her doggone it.)

Her friends and playmates have been the children (and sometimes grandchildren) of our friends. They are a group of kids we know things about raised by people we know things about.

Tomorrow all that changes.

The children who become her friends may be temporary or lifelong confidants. Either way they'll influence her decisions and help her choose good or bad.

They may use drugs and fight(or not fight) addiction together like Ethan and his friends, or they may show up with their new baby at a birthday party like my daughter's bestie did last weekend.

There's no crystal ball to guide us; no longer a way to filter and protect her.

It seems at times a precarious place for a 5-year-old, but at the same time a wonderful place. So much to learn and discover, so much about herself that she's just going to start to know, and the fact that now, at least, the mistakes are usually easy to correct and the right path not so hard to find, helps mitigate the terror of the unknown.

Today I said goodbye to our preschooler. Tomorrow I'll begin learning about our little girl.

One Week In, School is Still a Great Adventure

It should come as no surprise that E1 loves school.

She loves the bus.

She loves the teacher, even though she may not remember her name.

She loves the cafeteria, which is so big and so full of children and noise.

She loves the new books she brought home to work on reading each day, and the activities, and the other children, and the fact that during her first week of school she was appointed timekeeper, even though she's never on time for school.

On Friday, when it had snowed about three inches -- the third weather interruption of a week that had her with an early dismissal on the first day and a snow delay on the second -- she declared that she was not coming to my house, she was going to school.

Mommy told her there was no one there and her teacher was at home in her pajamas.

It's Pre-K and there's a lot to love, and it's still a big adventure that may wear off in another week. Then we'll see if she really likes school and how well it's going to work out for her.

In the meantime, here at Ma's house we've had some adjusting of our own to do.

There's a different pace to the day without E1 to lead the way. And everyone's schedule has been advanced by about an hour in order to get up and get ready for school, which means earlier lunch, earlier naps, a longer evening post-nap, but more time to get ready for any evening activities.

I even took in an extra girl on Thursday, but she was too quiet to take E1's place.

I've missed the tornado of her activity around which her siblings swirl like so much storm debris, sometimes enjoying the thrill of flying and being part of the action, and sometimes wailing as they are dropped for something new. I've missed her endless questions, her joyful "Ma!" when she gets out of the car, even her naptime fidgets which often subside into a blissful slumber once she's threatened with bodily harm.

E2 has missed her most of all, however, as though the sun around which she has orbited her whole life has gone dark. She regularly asks when E1 will be home; will she be here before Mommy; will they go to Awana; to gymnastics; will she be here for snack or dinner. She's learning a new pattern and for just a few hours each day, she's the big sister -- a generally kinder and gentler big sister than she experienced as a toddler. She and "her baby" seem content to play and have lunch, to lie down and take their naps, waiting for their leader to return.

Thursday, her only full day of school (she won't be going on Wednesday yet due to her weekly therapy), she rode the bus home and emerged with the declaration that like the rest of the school experience, it was delightful. When we wound up behind her bus on the way to gymnastics, it was a source of delight to tell her sister all about how that was her bus and she had ridden it to my house just a short time earlier.

The phone call to her mom's work, which her mom feared would be word of a meltdown, was actually her teacher calling to say what a great little girl she is.

So the experiment in school has, at least, begun well. The new experiences have been offset by the routine. She's gone to bed earlier, but had no additional meltdowns. Perhaps the therapy she's already had, from which we've noticed a change, has helped. Perhaps the meltdowns are yet to come. Perhaps she would have been fine either way.

Today we start week two.

The Public School Experiment Begins

The oldest little E will be starting school today.

It's a decision we've collectively wrestled with for months and one only exacerbated by her diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder, which technically makes her a special needs child.

To us, she has always been special, from the long wait for her actual delivery to her rushed first steps and delayed first words. In many ways, she's far ahead of many of her 4-year-old peers. She knows her colors, counts to 20 and usually remembers 16, can count by 2s and sometimes 5s, reads a little, and like all children has a mind like a sponge that soaks up everything. It's been our job to give her plenty to soak up.

SPD, however, means that sometimes she soaks up too much, or doesn't absorb it in the way we would. She wants to taste and sniff things we don't think about, her aversion to stinkbugs drives us up the wall at times, food has to be far from hot on the cold to warm spectrum. She's in near perpetual motion, humming and thrumming when she lies down to rest like an old-time telegraph wire so that we can practically hear her thoughts still racing. Too much of the wrong thing, or sometimes anything can push her over some unseen line, sending her into a meltdown that strikes fear in the hearts of parents and grandparents, not to mention siblings.

So going off to school of any kind has been a long debated prospect. We have researched home schooling, weighed the pros and cons, and in many ways found it preferable -- something I would never have said a decade or so ago. The resources are available to make it a viable option, even if you don't think you're a teacher. The support groups are there to provide help and social outings.

Ultimately, however, her mom came to the decision that we just couldn't unless we absolutely had to do it. She sees our work as the barrier, but while I agree I think even with work it would be possible, if E1 were the only child, or even the youngest. While her mom doesn't have enough hours to give her the time for school, I have the hours, but don't see how I could structure them so that she had time to learn without her little sisters, especially E3, driving us insane.

So after a visit to one of the county's pre-K classrooms last week, even as the debate on her future isn't quite settled, a decision of sorts has been made.

We're going to see how it goes.

While there isn't a lot at stake, while the structure may be more forgiving, while if it proves to be too much we can write it off as a failed experiment that she isn't ready to undertake, E1 will be going to school.

Perhaps she'll do well and the structure of a classroom will be what she needs away from the roller coaster days of life with a teething toddler. Perhaps other children who aren't her easygoing sister will help her to balance herself in ways we can't foresee. Perhaps the little girl that she hugged goodbye after her brief visit last week will turn into a real friend.

Perhaps all our worries will prove to be ill founded.

Or perhaps, as her dad said, we'll get called to the school a dozen times in the next few months. She won't take the transition well and she'll become the meltdown queen of her elementary school. In that case, we'll know we have a few months to come up with a workable plan B and prepare for kindergarten at home.

Either way, we're looking at a few weeks of adjusting. My house will be so much quieter without her little voice. E2 will be lonely without her playmate. Naps will be reconfigured to make time for after school pickup. Rough evenings for E1 are anticipated as her routine changes.

It will be a learning experience for us all because this week, E1 is going to school.

I'm not sure any of us are really ready for it.