Hard Things

Well Fans, already, on the second day of kindergarten, Joe has faced one of those textbook childhood challenges: he asked a boy (I'm-older-Aaron, incidentally) if Aaron wanted to play with him at recess, and Aaron said no.  There's not much about that that you can say is good except well, the first time that's happened is over.  (You can think, as Julie did, "What a little s#%$."  But you can't say that.)

But, we've got a plan, Fans, we've got a plan.  Because while it's good to let a teacher know some things, part of getting older and going to school is learning what problems you might be able to solve on your own.  So, tomorrow, Joe is going to do two things at recess:

1.  He's going to ask someone in his class if they want to go down the slide and if that someone says yes, then they'll go off to the slide.  But if that someone says no, then Joe will say, "O-kay.  See you later!" and head off to the slide.  See?  He'll have places to go, things to do, so whatever if you don't want to slide down the slide, Someone.  But hopefully Someone will say "Yes!  Let's go!"

2.  He's going to figure out what his favorite thing is to do on the play ground.  He may have, admittedly, already figured this out since it's now one of our go-to playgrounds.  But, again, he'll have something to do when he's dropped into one of those situations where it's a big mass of squirming, shrieking bodies that he finds overwhelming.

It is worth mentioning that Our Hero negotiated this situation at recess after making his way through two hours of before-care at Kid's Place, which was also new to him.  Julie left him reading two books we put in his backpack, just for his time at Kid's Place.  (We weren't sure of the lay of the land and they had said it was o-kay to bring books or magazines.)  When we arrived, there were about 10 of the 30 or so kids that one of the supervisors, Ms. Gina, said would be there total (about 13 kindergartners today, but all the numbers can vary).  Gina told Julie this afternoon that Joe read those books for a while and then found a Spiderman puzzle which he worked on for a long time.  In the afternoon, she said it's pretty chaotic with all the kids arriving after dismissal so she wasn't sure if Joe got a snack.  (He did.  He put it in his backpack "to keep it safe" because he "wasn't sure where to sit.")  She said he went outside for a bit, but she saw him looking overwhelmed so she approached him and he told her he wanted his Mommy.  Gina told him his Mommy would be there soon and took him inside and hooked him up with another puzzle.  Julie will admit that she didn't manage to fight back entirely the tears in her eyes hearing all this, but she promised Gina she wouldn't cry every day, and told her she knew it would be o-kay soon; it was just hard right now and he was our first.  Gina said her son was 21 and she remembered how hard it all could be.  So she seems like good people all the way around.

Joe did figure out how to buy milk today.  You stand in the "lunch from home line," but at its front, apparently.  He asked for help opening his applesauce.  He also remembered that one of the other boys at his table is named Brandon.  He used the bathroom (it's in his room).  He did all that, and some really hard things today.  Do you ever notice how bravery doesn't feel so great in the moment?  What's up with that?  But maybe one day soon Joe will feel what a triumph today was.

In the meantime, tomorrow is another day, and he's got a plan for it.  We are making it up as we go along, but it feels like a reasonably solid plan.

We have a plan, too: be patient, remember that today was only the second day, and to keep remembering that if you don't have anything nice to say little s#%$s, best not to say anything at all.