So Half Days It Is

As you can probably tell by the title of this post, things did not go so well yesterday for Aaron at preschool. It was difficult to say the least when I dropped him off, but the assistant told me that she would let him call me around 10:00, so when the phone rang right at 10:00 I wasn't surprised. However, it wasn't Aaron, it was his teacher calling to say, " Um, yeah this is Aaron's teacher, right, um maybe you should come in to get him and take him home. Yeah, that would be great." Then she asked me something about TPS reports and I was like, "Dude, one thing at a time." So, yeah, it was so bad that the teacher called to ask, no, beg me to come and get him.


When I got there he was sitting quietly with his teacher, but he looked like he had just done ten rounds with Apollo Creed and was saying, "Cut me Mick." His eyes were all swollen and he was so hoarse from the screaming, oh the screaming, all he could say was, "I want to go home, I want to go home." So I'm all, "Now what the hell do I do," because I really didn't think that taking him home was the answer. I had hoped that I could convince him to tough it out, tow the line, think outside the box, but he wasn't buying the crap that I was selling.


Again, for Aaron's sake I don't feel like I need to get too in depth with all of the details, but lets just say that after spending THAT much time trying to talk him down from the ledge, I wanted to climb up there myself. Long, long story short, I spoke with the principal who suggested that maybe we try half days for a while until he gets used to this new arrangement. So that's what we are going to do. His teacher assured me that this is nothing, and that if this is the only problem that we ever have with him we should consider ourselves lucky. "You're going to laugh about this some day," she said. Someday, maybe, but today ain't that day.


I am so disappointed in how this is playing out. Let me be clear that I am in no way saying that I am disappointed in Aaron because he is a little guy and this is a lot to take, but I just thought that school was going to be easy for him. He has never had any problems with separation before and I was positive that he was going to love every single second of preschool. This whole thing has made me question every parenting choice that we have made down Pampers vs Huggies.


Maybe we should have sent him to school last year when he was three, but he was THREE. I know that many children go to preschool at that age, but he just seemed so young then. Plus, Elyse had just been born that June and I was afraid that sending him to preschool just two months after her birth would make him feel like he was being replaced. Who knows, maybe he should have gone. Maybe he would have adjusted better. I don't know. Like I have said before, this is so troubling because it is so unlike Aaron, and I feel like I have really been thrown for a loop. I'm all, "Who is this kid? What's going on? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, are you a terrible parent for not sending your child to preschool when he was three?"


I guess the only thing that we can do now is try the half day thing and see how that goes. I'm sure that this isn't going to last forever and one day we probably will look back at this and laugh. I have no doubt that even though this is a rocky patch, Aaron is destined to do great things. All I know is that someday when he is giving his acceptance speech after winning the Nobel prize, he had better mention his mother first because after this week, the kid owes me.