cascadian telegrams: school daze

[Listening to: 'Altocomulus Opacus' from 'Pop Ambient 2007' by 'Markus Guentner']

(school actually starts next week... this is about Malcolm's first few weeks @ his daycare)

coming back was relatively easy for Susan and I; after all, we'd been at Microsoft here in Seattle for five years before we left for Copenhagen, we have established friends here (and family not terrifically far away) and we knew the drill.

But it's been a little harder for Malcolm who has had some anxiety his first few weeks back. He's gone from a small børnehave-kindergarten with (typically) around 8 kids and two adults watching them to around 50 kids in his new daycare, where he is among the youngest and smallest, and where he doesn't know anybody.

At first it felt like we were putting him in the orphanage. He clung to us the first few days and didn't want us to leave, and he cried a bit on the second day, but we took the teachers' advice and tried to leave quickly and cleanly. According to them it is much easier for the kids that way. They told us afterwards that he became chatty and engaged a little while after we left, and that made sense... that's what he is like. But we still felt like we'd taken our puppy out to the countryside in the car, thrown a stick for him to chase and then drove off again.

He's a bit shy with the new kids, unsure of himself, and unused to having to initiate any conversation and he has to engage the adults if he wants help, they're too busy to watch over him directly. In the first week he had a bout of diarrhea and soiled himself... he didn't ask the teachers for help because he was unsure who to ask and he was a bit ashamed afterwards... some of the older kids made fun of him for that.

But like all new kids, he found other kids who were also new, who needed friends and made them his friends. His 'special' friend is another boy, Riley Jones, who is quite shy and withdrawn and who is also starting kindergarten next week. Riley and Malcolm seek each other out and are usually together on the playground.

I overheard one of the teachers asking Riley's mum if he was OK as he was so withdrawn and shy. "Oh no, he's always like that at first" she said (at first? how many times has the kid had to switch schools?). "but he has been talking about Malcolm.". I was glad to hear that as Malcolm has gotten in the habit of sitting on the couch in the reading area when we arrive, saying "I'll just wait for Riley to show up.". So they've formed a bond.

He's better now. Each day is a little improvement, for example today when I dropped him off, some of the kids on the playground yelled "Hey Malcolm! Come play with us!" and when we picked him up he was excited about learning to play 'Battleship' and tag and other games with kids.

I like the people who run the place as well... they seem like very nice, patient and decent people. It's a tough job watching all those kids! One of the administrators (Mike) and one of the other adults (Cheri) had cool tattoos... in his case, a tattoo of a meerkat family on his calf. I liked him straight away :). And besides that, he's super friendly and gentle with the kids who all seem to love him.

[Listening to: 'Kappsta' from 'Pop Ambient 2007' by 'The Field']

After a few weeks he is still a tiny bit hesitant but settling in. They had an outing to Camp Long in West Seattle a week or two back where the kids could camp out if they wanted to; Malcolm stayed for the day and for hotdogs and "sm'ores" over a campfire and we picked him up after that.

The camp outing seemed really nice: Some teenagers who had attended the day care came for the day to help out with the kids, and Malcolm had fun playing soccer with the teenagers followed by "delicious s'mores!" as he kept calling them. Dave was up for the weekend with us and caught this picture of Malcolm enjoying his first "s'more" :)