A little over a year ago I explained, in an entry, that Aran, my middle-aged son who by then was 3 years old and had been in P3 for a few months, went to school only when he wanted to.
Today I talk about him again, a year later, when he is doing P4, to explain that it is no longer necessary to ask him every morning if he wants to go to school or not, because goes happy every day, so much so that even the first one tries to enter the class when the (horrible) arrival bell rings.
Why we just made the decision to ask you every morning
Everything is explained in the previous post, but I give you a quick summary. Let's say that, being a solution that a long time ago would not have taken nor crazy, because asking a child if he wants to go to school sounds absurd, because children, as a rule, with three years do not want to go, we saw that it was the only plausible option for everyone in my family.
The adaptation did not take her too well. Many children adapted with more or less luck, but Aran never wanted to go. Crying every morning, discomfort, holding on to us before entering, etc., some morning we even ended up leaving him with tears in his eyes, encouraging him to come in and with that feeling of betraying him and betraying us, for not addressing his discomfort.
"He immediately stays calm and spends the morning very well," his teacher told us. However, in the afternoon, already at home, we were careful marimorenas. It was his way of letting go of anger, discomfort and all the tension that was kept in school hours to let us know, with all this, that it wasn't right, that he suffered every morning, that he did not want to go to school, that he was not at ease there and that we, instead of listening to him and listening to him, were leaving him against his will.
We talked to the teacher, in case he had a magic recipe, but he just said that "let's see, this is very good here," as if the only important thing was that and not how bad it was later in the afternoon, vomiting nerves How could. The solution we expected did not come and we, as parents, felt worse and worse. We thought about taking him out of school, because in total, to go unhappy and have a bad time, because "another year will go".
Already with that decision in mind, in the bedroom, we finally chose to find an intermediate point: "Let him go if he wants, and not go if he doesn't want to." And so we let him know. One of many mornings told us no, with capital letters: NO, and that day, finally, we told him that OK, if I didn't want to, I didn't have to go.
He was surprised because we had finally listened to him and finally we took into account his wishes. He was surprised and that day was not, but from that day, when we asked him, he went most days. Come on, in the end I was a little less than when I was forced, but I went when I wanted to.
This is how the course went, with days when he wanted and days when he preferred to stay at home. His teacher told us that he did not agree with the measure we had taken, since he was losing the thread of what other children learned and that if he went to school so inconstantly it was difficult to work with him and sometimes he was lost.
We did not mind. We prefer to be lost by not going, but that when I was happy and convinced to go not that I was lost by going, being wrong there, not attending enough or having to do things without wanting or forced, simply because it touches.
And now, as I say, the sea of contentment
A year or so has passed, it has changed course and Aran goes happy and happy every morning. He has one more year, he assumes that the school is the place where most children go, he sees it as one more thing he has to do and although one day he says he doesn't feel like going, he goes without us having to say anything special because He does it as anyone says on a Monday that we don't feel like going to work that day. Do not feel like it, but we go without anyone telling us "now, but you have to go".
By this I do not want to say that all children have to be allowed to decide every morning, at age three, whether or not to go to school. First because it is possible that there are not many people who can choose every morning to stay with their child at home and second because, although It seems to me the best option if a child does not want to go, another solution may be better for another father, mother or child.
What I try to explain is more or less the same as I said when I explained that Jon, with 6 years, stopped sleeping with us, that many times, when things are not forced, everything takes the normal course equally.
If we had forced it, if we had emphasized every day that I went to school because "we have to go", knowing that Mom and Guim, the little one, stayed at home, it is very possible that now he also went every day without questioning , and perhaps even happy, but who knows if even now he would continue to reproach us, indirectly, that in his day we did not listen to him or take his opinion into account.
However we did it, we ignored who recommended us not to do such a rarity, and now Aran goes to school like all children. And we are so happy because we know that, in that sense, he has nothing to throw us in the face and, more importantly, we have nothing to throw ourselves in the face.
