…and on the third day of the new schedule we’re starting to find the rough edges. Getting up for school is no longer shiny and new, it is now just early. Way early. Especially considering that the kid’s bio-clocks think they shouldn’t be going to sleep until after 9 pm. I’m trying to adjust the bedtimes earlier, but it is difficult when the sky is still light and some of their friends are running around our cul de sac right outside their bedroom windows.
So far there have been no Incidents at school. Everyone still likes their teachers. Mostly. Kiki wants to drop one class because it is annoying her greatly after only two days. Since it is an elective, I’m going to let her. That’s tomorrow’s task. Patch had his kindergarten assessment. He was very subdued and concerned about getting things right. He did a great job, but the change of context meant that he wasn’t able to provide sounds for all the letters he knows. This upset him a little because he knew he should know them. But his teacher worked with him perfectly and I assured him that “I don’t know” can be the right answer. In the end it was a positive experience.
Today had an extra layer of emotional difficulty because the backyard neighbor’s dog was put down yesterday evening. My kids were just as attached to the dog as her kids were, so there has been some emotional aftermath. Both Kiki and Gleek came home from school and burst into tears within minutes of entering the house. In both cases it was because they realized that the little dog who’d greeted them so happily after school would never do so again. The raw reality of dozens of “never agains” loomed large. For me too. I wrote a big long post and then realized that no one but me needed the litany of memories about my neighbor’s dog. I’ll save it for when the kids need to hear stories about the dog.
The staff at the elementary school here say the schools have their hours backwards … right now (well, starting in a week), Goose has to get up for eighth grade an hour before Pirate and Wen get up for third and first, but the school nurse says it’d be better if they staggered them the other way, because the small kids can handle getting up early OK, but the teenagers really need that extra couple of hours and would do much better if they started class for the day at 10 instead of 8.
I’ve actually observed that effect. When Kiki hit her growth spurt she suddenly needed lots more sleep than she had been getting. The physiological demands of growing and maturing are significant, but teens are unlikely to respond by going to bed earlier. Kiki started crashing into naps after school, then having trouble going to sleep at bedtime, so she still had trouble getting up in the morning. It seems to have leveled out now, but there was a month or so where it seemed like all she did was sleep.