Moving On Up

Lawson started preschool one week before he turned two. He started in the "baby room", which is for 18 month - 3 year olds. When they leave the baby room depends on a lot of factors, so some of the kids in Lawson's class were his age, some were slightly younger, and some were a year to a year and a half older. With the exception of some rough mornings adjusting to preschool drop off instead of Nana coming to our house, Lawson did great with preschool and the baby room. He learned a lot and even turned into a teacher at home, trying to teach Jason and I our shapes and colors.

Toward the end of the school year something weird started to happen. For about a week or two, kind of out of no where Lawson started throwing huge fits when I dropped him off and was spending a lot of time in time out during the day after I dropped him off. After a week of just terrible days, it seemed like nothing the teacher and I tried was working, so I talked with the preschool director to see what we could figure out. She mentioned a couple of things: toddlers go through phases, toddlers sometimes act out when they see other kids acting out, toddlers sometimes act out when they are board. Longer than a week seemed like a long time for this kind of a phase, so we focused not the other two options. The director felt like Lawson was probably board and was acting out because he was unhappy in "the baby room". In her words, "He's already potty trained, which puts him ahead of the three year olds in his class, and, he talks like a 10 year old." So, we slowly let him start doing other things outside of the baby room. He was the kitchen helper in the mornings for a week or two, and he got to go to the three year old class for part of the day too. This made a huge difference! Who knows exactly what the problem was. What I do know is that he did better from that point forward.

We shall see how he progresses from this point forward. Maybe he will always be a little ahead for his age. Maybe he won't be. We will take it one day at a time.