Our Daughter Starts Preschool

When I originally started this blog, I planned for the secondary topic to be our struggles to parent our daughter (from my point of view). I've hardly written on this subject, as my mother's health problems took up most of my blogging attention. My mother is hardly out of the woods, but her condition is slowly improving. She is going weekly to her chorus practice and her exercise class. She is driving locally, planning meals and cooking, and functioning much better than periods in the summer. I think our plan is for her to get to the point where she feels positive about what she is doing every day and trying new things, and so that she can start making some decisions about how she wants to live in the future.

Before my mother became unable to function in May, we had hoped that our daughter would start preschool in the fall. We had looked at various preschools in our area, and were on a couple of waiting lists for fall openings. When my mother became sick and my wife starting taking our daughter to her parents' house early every weekday, we had to give up on those plans for preschools in our area. Without my mother's help with dropping off or picking up our daughter, we didn't think our daughter was ready for a full-day program. And in truth, my wife and I started thinking about moving closer to her parents (a minimum half-hour drive away on the highway) and looking for a preschool in that area. Since we are expecting a baby in November, we would also need to find childcare close by for the baby as well after my wife finished her maternity leave and went back to work.

Two weeks ago, my parents-in-law were compelled to take in a relative from out of state. He is high school age, but because of being unwanted by both his mother's family and father's family, he took a flight across country and will live with my parents-in-law for a year or two while he works on his high school equivalency certificate. I was especially concerned about my wife's cousin's emotional state, and if our daughter would be all right there at the house while my parents-in-law tried to work at home.

So within twenty four hours, we decided to stay at our current home with my mother and look for a preschool nearby. I scheduled three appointments for the Friday (with one or two backups from our previous search). Luckily, the first one we looked at, a child center close to my work downtown, was very professionally operated and we could tell that the staff really cared about their children. And most importantly, our daughter liked the place a lot, and didn't want to leave the playground. And the center had additional services that our daughter had been missing these last few months because of my mother's illness. It really was a simple decision which facility to choose.

We have been concerned because our daughter has only been cared for by family members since she was born. She is the only granddaughter on either side of the family, and she tends to get spoiled while being taken care of by her grandparents. Also, she hasn't really been exposed to other children her age, and even when we are with her, she is very shy and uncomfortable.
Our hope is that preschool will help her to socialize and develop developmental skills in which she is behind other two-year olds.

On Monday, our daughter started preschool. We arrived about 8:30 am, and I spent about an hour with her, though she didn't really want to be with the other kids in her class. The head of the preschool program was very helpful, and said our daughter could spend time with her until she adjusted to the preschool. There were tears when I had to leave, and our daughter cried a lot that morning, but by late morning she was in the classroom with the director and observing what the other kids were doing. My mother is helping us by picking our daughter up this week earlier than she will usually stay, so that she can ease into the routine. When she came back home, our daughter slept an hour from the exhaustion of the new routine.

My wife didn't sleep well on Sunday night from worrying about our daughter, and things have felt very stressful for me the last couple of days. I feel like it's the first day of preschool for me, too. Today went a little bit better for our daughter, and I have hope that things will be a little better as the days go by.