We've started school . . with some ups and downs . . .

We met with the principal of our public elementary school prinicpal shortly after Natasha arrived to talk about how to get her started in school. This small school has never had an older international adoptee, so we were all new to this. We decided to let her stay home a few weeks before she started school to get her acclimated a bit before introducing a whole school full of new kids and new experiences. After a couple of weeks it was clear that she was comfortable with us, our home, our community and with our extended family. So it was time to start school this past Monday. The weekend before we started reminding her that she was going to schoool on Monday. She certainly had a lot of fears (understandably so) and had one meltdown that lasted a couple of hours. But by the time Monday morning rolled around she had picked out her outfit, organized her bookbag and was ready to go. We decided to start her out with just a couple hours a day to see how it would go. We walked her to class, met the principal, her teacher and a few students.We told the teaher to call if she seemed overwhelmed. We all agreed that Natasha would let the teacher know when she had enough for the day and we would come get her. Monday morning there was an assembly, so we stayed for that too. By the time we left she seemed pretty comfortable and didn't even notice when we left. I felt just like we had dropped our kindergartener off for their first ever day of school.

Her first day of school went just fine. It was a minimum day because of school conferences, which was good. She made friends with the girls in the class, and even got invited for a play date already. She gave us a big thumbs up when we picked her up. We thought all was good. Tuesday and Wednesday was more of the same, although when we asked how school went she crinkled her nose up a little. Not quite the big "high five" from Monday. But she got more phone numbers from her classmates so it still all seemed good. She did her math homework and seems to be at the same math level. We thought we were in the clear.

Then Wednesday night hit. All was good until it was time to go to bed. She started out with "No School!" in kind of a joking manner. We laughed and assured her that, yes indeed she was going to school. Then it kinda escalated to where she was insisting. We held firm. Soon she starting wailing and sobbing nearly hysterically. We couldn't figure out what was wrong. She refused to talk to the translators so we could figure out what was going on. We tried the on-line translator but we couldnt find out what was truly bothering her. We finally got her to sleep after about 1 1/2 hours of crying. We hoped that in the morning she would feel better about it all.

Thursday morning she started in with saying "No School" before she even opened her eyes. Again it escalated into hysterics. We were pretty firm that she was going to go back to school. After about a hour of this she was still in her PJs and it was clear we were not winning the battle. We tried the on-line translator again. We got a clue it was something about the kids in class. Were they being mean? "No". Was the work too difficult? "No". By this time she had crawled up into the fetal position on her bed. Mark went to the school to talk to the teacher and I stayed home to console her. Oh Boy, this was not starting out to be a good day

Anyways, the teacher was able to shed some light. She had noticed by the end of the day Natasha looked exhausted and overwhelmed. The kids were being nice to her, too nice. Apparently she had become somewhat of a celebrity. All the kids loved her and were curious about her and wanted to be her best friend. She had too much attention from too many kids who were all speaking English too her way too fast. Ok, now I get it! I went back to the on-line translator and the gist of it was "too many friends".

So the rest of the day we stayed together quietly and did a few fun things. She settled down and agreed to go to school tomorrow, at least part of the day. I think we will try it out at 2-3 hours and see where that leads us. Whew!