Little man on a new campus

Aug 26, 2012

The story I was planning on posting last week (which never materialized) was going to be titled: “Look our kindergarten, here’s come Nathan!” After the Meet-the-Teacher night and a planning meeting regarding transportation and such, you could see the excitement on Nathan’s face, his little feet would scoot down the halls like he was an upperclassmen. You would have never known that this was a new building, new teacher and entirely new classmates.

Annette and I were feeling a lot more at ease ourselves, as neither of us deals well with change. One of our biggest concerns was throwing Nathan into a new environment with kids who wouldn’t know him and we would know if/how he would be accepted. This past Monday was Nathan’s official first day. We both drove him to school and helped him get settled, and I headed off to work and Annette headed home.

Kindergarten in our district is an all-day class which is also longer than any class Nathan has participated with in the past which can bring it’s own hazards and worries. Nonetheless, Nathan was still excited and we received a favorable report on how he handled the new experience.

Day two, was Nathan’s first day on the bus. For three years he had tried to sneak on the busses at Nisonger, but now it would be stopping at our front door and chauffeuring him to the front door of school and back. When the bus arrived, there seemed to be a sense of controlled anxiety as the lift came down, we loaded him on and up to his seat he went. He gave a look over, a little confused as to the fact that neither Mom or Dad was going with him.

Still, the experience was a smooth as we could ask, and the report from the second day stated he was starting to look tired toward the end of the day. School was definitely working him hard and not only was he taking naps shortly after arriving home, but also falling asleep for the night around 8:30 and having to be woken up in the morning. We knew he was tired when the report came home that he slept during quiet-time during the school day as well. (He rarely naps in new places. Annette and I don’t object, but hopefully it’s also a sign that school is a place he feels comfortable as well.

As Thursday came and went, he made it through the school day alright, but fatigue and apparent other health issues threw him into a bit of a tailspin, and for the first time in over a year Nathan’s seizure disorder raised its ugly head as well. We kept him home the bulk of the day on Friday, but again seizure issues showed up at night, making for a very tense weekend.

As we face the new week, we have cautious optimism that he will adjust a little better to the schedule, learning that he’ll need to accept eating lunch at the hand of someone new, who’s looking to take good care of him. We know he enjoys doing things as similar as possible to his peers.

Time and change will surely show, but we’re looking for good things to happen once everything settles down, and he adapts to life’s new schedule. Still we wish good luck to Miss Krauss and all the other aides and therapists and once he settles in, I think they’ll all have one excited little guy to be going to big-kid school.