Seven years ago, I was fairly new to the parenting world, with a soon-to-be 3 year old boy and an 8 month old baby girl. My son was what I called a “Velcro baby”, meaning that he clung to me like the familiar hook and loop tape. When we had to be separated, you could almost hear the tearing. He was a non-stop mover and talker who just loved to be with his family.
As Boo approached his third birthday, well meaning friends and relatives asked if I was going to put him in preschool. I hadn’t actually given preschool much thought, but being a first time mom, I figured those who knew better, well – knew better. So we marched him down to the preschool and registered him.
The week after his birthday, Boo went to preschool. We had taken him to the school the week before to meet his teachers and get the lay of the land. We talked up preschool at home and he was excited to go. However, when the time came for me to leave him that first day, he cried and cried. I was assured that all children cried on their first day and they all did better over time.
Except for Boo. As the days went by his enthusiasm waned and I had to do more and more convincing that school was where he wanted to be. About two weeks into the experience, one of his teachers asked to talk to me. Apparently Boo had grabbed another child by the neck. His side of the story was that the other child wouldn’t let him have a turn on the computer and he got angry. This was so not like him at all. We shook it off, talked about appropriate behavior and gave it another try.
The next week was an “ice cream social” that the parents were invited to attend. After the event, I casually asked how Boo had been doing. The teacher let me know that Boo had been doing fine even though he didn’t often participate in the activities and only cried a little when I left him.
While Boo does have his faults, he has never been a violent child. Until attending preschool, he had never bitten, hit or kicked anyone. And now, after three weeks he was only crying a little? Why was he not participating? What could be going on in his little head? Add to these things the increasingly poor attitude he was developing towards preschool and I really questioned the value of continuing. This was just not what I wanted for him.
So what did I want? I wanted my happy-go-lucky little boy back. I began to see that I needed to keep him home with me. He wanted to spend his days reading books, going to the park, playing on our computer and loving his baby sister. He just wanted to be at home.
Boo never returned to school.
But how was he going to learn all those things that preschool teaches? What could the future hold for a preschool drop-out? Maybe I could teach him those things at home!! In doing some research I realized what I should have known all along – that all of the social skills Boo could learn at school were already being taught to him at home. But what about academics? Well, to my surprise, a good portion of home schoolers recommended not doing anything at all for preschool.
Still, I wasn’t sure. I kept searching and I stumbled upon Sonlight Curriculum. At the time, they were one of the only home school curricula to offer a preschool level core. But even their own literature and online forums recommended it for children ages 4 to 5 years old. But undaunted and convinced I found my answer, I ordered the Pre-K level.
When I received the books I was so excited. But even more impressive than the books was the catalog. The catalog was a preview of all the wonderful things that were available…if I kept my children at home for school. It was in reading the catalog that I realized that I could home school. I wanted to home school.
I ended up putting the Pre-K books aside for another year. In that time I started to form my ideas of what I wanted for my children’s education. My husband and I made the decision to teach our children at home and never looked back.
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Boo is now a 4th grader who has plans to be home schooled through college. His mom, Lorri also teaches his 2nd grade sister while trying to keep the 3 year old from making too much of a mess. When the school day is over, she blogs about their adventures at The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.
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After swearing never to send my 3rd dd to school, I did this summer. To preschool, and only because her classroom etiquette at co-ops and other class activities was atrocious. Well, I found out, she , like your son would not participate with the other children. But she learned to listen to adults as I wanted. So she too has come home and “dropped out”. But she learned what we wanted her to learn so why does she have to keep going?
My thoughts are your little boy could not understand why mommy would just leave him there in that strange place. Which should be how all 3 yr olds react. I find it sad when they do not prefer mommy at that age, lack of bonding?