School Anxiety:  What Has Helped Our Family

A few years ago, our oldest started daily pre-k.  Things were great at first, but they got worse.  A lot worse.  He started on a Wednesday and absolutely loved it.  Thursday he cried and said it was because he didn’t like the noisy cafeteria, which they had to go to first thing.  Thursday is also soccer practice day, and the day he gets a little one-on-one from an awesome homeschool teacher, that I’m glad we didn’t have to give up because he loves.  By Friday, he was tired and totally did not want to go to school.  He even mentioned that if I didn’t make him go to school, he would go take a nap….which, he hates napping these days, so I knew it was serious.  I had to pry his hands from the carseat and carry him inside.  By the end of this traumatic experience, he was screaming and crying and I was feeling sadness and guilt.  I wasn’t sure that we had made the right decision, but I said a prayer for him and went home with our then 2 year old.

When I went to pick him up a few hours later, he was smiling and he said he liked school.  The teacher said he had a good day and stopped crying.  He told me that he cried through the cafeteria time and part of recess, but then enjoyed the rest of the day.  It’s so awful to think that your child is crying and you can’t do anything for them.  Friends of mine said it was good for him, that it would prepare him for other life experiences, and he would be fine.  Well, fine he was, but I am not sure that it was necessarily “good” for him, but I guess that’s all dependent on how you look at things.  I know people that have never been left at school, crying and screaming, and they turned out just fine.  🙂  I know quite a few adults who were homeschooled that have adjusted to life quite well, so I don’t really think that all of this is a necessary evil, but it’s just something we have to look at as a family.  It’s a personal parenting decision.

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