Next month will bring big changes to our household. My toddler, who long ago stopped fitting the definition of “toddler,” will become a preschooler in both title and position. He turns four in August. The week after his birthday, he’ll start his first year in preschool. I held out as long as I could, and I’m still debating it. But I’ve paid the fees and signed on the dotted line, and he’s in.
And now we wait. We wait and wonder and worry. At least, I do.
My soon-to-be four-year-old is bright and curious and sharp as a tack. He picks things up quicker than you’d expect of someone who still calls breakfast “breskquit.” He knows his colors and shapes and letters. He can count to about 13 until he gets lost. A couple of weeks ago, he explained to me that the water on the windshield disappeared because of evaporation.
I don’t have any fears about his intelligence. I know he’ll learn even more at school because he’s a cute, snarky sponge who loves to figure out how things work. My fears lie in the other things, the non-school things, the things we’ve enrolled him into preschool specifically to learn.
Fear #1: He won’t make any friends.
For the last four years, it’s been him and me at home. We’re fortunate to live close to both sets of grandparents, so he sees his grandmothers twice a week, and we plan outings when we can. But most of my friends work outside the home, or our schedules never seem to align. So by and large, Arthur has spent his toddlerhood at home. No siblings or cousins his age, the only friends ones we’ve tried to force on him.
And his mother isn’t exactly a social butterfly. Try as I might, I’ve never gotten the hang of playdates. I can count on one hand the number of playdates I’ve attended or hosted since Arthur was born. Maybe that will change once he’s in school and we meet more people, but maybe it won’t.
Will he make friends? Will the other kids like him? Will he be nice? What do I do if he’s bullied or he’s the bully?
Fear #2: He’ll be too much to handle.
We don’t have an official diagnosis, but a therapist we spoke with thinks our kiddo has ADHD. Coupled with his (again, unofficial but recognized by an occupational therapist) sensory processing issues, Arthur’s behavior is mind-numbingly frustrating difficult sometimes. We’re working on both through different types of therapy.
But this will be the first time we’ve put Arthur in a position where he won’t have family around to indulge his behavior. And while I think that’s a good and necessary thing, I worry that the teachers and other kids in the class won’t understand him. Despite reassurances that preschool teachers have seen it all, I can’t help but think that they’ve seen it all because at some point, there was a first kid who did it. (Logic can work against you sometimes.)
I don’t want to paint a picture of Arthur as a hurricane of destruction. In fact, we’ve (somehow) made it through the toddler years with very few actual tantrums. But he’s got a big attitude and big feelings – as all preschoolers do – and I worry about how he’ll do under a different type of authority. I also worry for the preschool teachers.
Will they be kind? Will they understand? Will he learn to listen and adhere to instructions from non-family adults?
Fear #3: Something bad will happen to him.
It’s the same fear all parents have, isn’t it? That something will go wrong, that something will happen to our children, and that we won’t be able to do anything about it. A long list of what-ifs scrolls through my mind, peppered with images I don’t ask for and can’t unsee. It doesn’t help that sensationalist headlines flash in my social media feeds. It’s never your kid until it is.
For the first time ever, I’ll be trusting a complete stranger to take care of my son on a regular basis. That sentence is hard for me to type, let alone think about. It doesn’t matter that the school we’ve chosen is well-liked, that I know people who send their children there, and that he’ll only be there twice a week for five hours at a time. It feels like I’m shoving him out into the world – even though the logical part of my brain says that’s silly – and throwing him to the wolves.
Will he be okay? And if he’s not okay, does he know how to tell me? What if the worst happens?
These aren’t the only fears I have as we head into our big life changes this fall, but they’re enough to be getting on with, so to speak. I hope to look back on this post one day and chuckle at my obvious first-time parent worries.
In the meantime, I’m doing my best to swallow these fears and trust that my smart preschooler will eventually become a well-adjusted one.
