Brace yourself, this is a long one.
Jack hates school. He’s in PreK and hates school. I can’t believe a 5 year old can hate school! I LOVED school at his age, it is not something I understand really. He is a good kid…typical boy…typical 5 year old. He is healthy and he is a BIG boy. Over 4 feet tall and 55 pounds.
We enrolled Jack into PreK this year, instead of keeping him in a home daycare because he started to tell us he didn’t like going there. He didn’t ever say why, he just didn’t like it. I thought he was possibly bored. He is a very bright child. His home daycare did not have any type of curriculum base nor really a schedule (just meals and naps were scheduled). Which was fine with me, but then it seemed he was possibly becoming bored.
By the age of 2 Jack knew all his letters by sight and could say the alphabet. He knew how to count to 10 and also could tell us his numbers by sight. He knew colors and shapes too.
We say his first 2 years of life he was just soaking it all in, observing. At his 2nd birthday he wasn’t talking much. Sure he said a few things here and there, but not what a lot of his peers were doing. I was worried. But soon after his speech exploded and out came everything. Within a couple months of his birthday he was able to tell us the alphabet, recognized numbers and letters. He knew colors and shapes. And was pretty much carrying on normal conversations with us, like most other 2 year olds. By the time he was 3 1/2 he was able to write most of the letters and numbers and learned to write his first name. He loved that he had mastered that. He was so proud to show us what he could do, even displaying it on the walls and such. :)
So, when he started crying about going to his daycare and how he didn’t have fun there, Chris and I thought it was definitely time for our children to be enrolled in school. We looked over the schools in the county here and we found the perfect fit. It had preK 3 and 4, which, since we had Aeryn, it was crucial for us to find a school she could go to as well. It is a Christian school and we just love it.
Jack is now 5 and can read just about anything you put in front of him (age appropriate of course) and we are so proud of him. He even knows some math as well. I am so proud of him. He is so smart, learning is just something that comes easy to him. Just like his daddy. Actually, my mom in law tells us constantly that Jack is literally a clone of his dad in just about every way. Chris hated school too…he says because it was boring.
So, Jack has been in school since the end of August. He has not been all that happy about it since day 1. Even though he seemed eager when we talked to him about it. Here it is early February and he still fights us almost every day about school. He tells us he hates it. He says “I hate coloring, I hate letters, I already know the letters and that 1+1=2.” He is getting so big that I can hardly handle the fights he puts up…he is a very strong boy and trying to lift a 55 pound limp child is very difficult for me AND his teacher, God bless her.
He has a wonderful teacher. She is so good to the kids and I think she is just wonderful! She tells us he is coming out of his shell in school and is actually talking in class a little, he is starting to talk to the kids in class. I will see him in there when I drop him off and he is sitting at his desk with this sad look on his face and usually not enthusiastic about participating. He has a buddy (I’ll call him G) in there and he’s so sweet to Jack. But Jack tells me he isn’t G’s friend. I don’t know. He says there’s 2 kids that bother him and one is G and another kid in class.
I just don’t see that Jack is really thriving in school and it really concerns me. Will it be like this for the next 13 years?? Will he hate school and be withdrawn from everyone like this for the next 13 years? How miserable is that?? I loved school. Everything about school. I loved my teachers, I loved learning and all the projects we worked on every day. I know I had my moments, but I was very involved and very social (probably too much)! I just don’t understand his feelings with this.
I’ve asked him to tell me what he likes about school and at first he always says, nothing, I hate it. But then I get a few things out of him. Like gym day (Friday’s) is his favorite day of the week. He fought us this morning going into class even after the “gym day” reminder. He didn’t want to color he said. A lot of what he likes to do in school is with the toys. He likes to play at gym, he likes the car center or the computer center, the kitchen center and these special blocks that have papers with it and makes designs (don’t know what this is, but it’s his most favorite). He doesn’t speak much about his classmates, just that this one girl is the prettiest because she’s so smart. And then talks about the “bad” kid in his class. When I pick him up when school is out he is almost always playing by himself. And Jack is always well behaved in school, he has yet to receive a single tally and gets plenty of praises in the 3 days he goes a week.
Like I said, my mother in law has said over and over again that Jack is Chris all over again…down to the hating school.
<--Christopher
Here is a quote from an email I just got from my mother in law: “I hope Jack soon starts to like school too, but he sounds just like Chris, so I really don't know what to tell you other than good luck!”
Chris NEVER liked school…I don’t want the same for my son. I want him to be happy. I want him to enjoy school even if there are things he really hates, to embrace it all because sometimes we just have to do things we don’t like and endure people we don’t like and then life goes on. I want him to love life. He was never like this before. But then again, I (or Chris) was home with him for 4 years, he didn’t have to like school because he didn’t go to school.
Chris and I are searching for ideas to help Jack. I don’t want school to be his nemesis. Some idea’s we’ve had are: homeschooling or putting him into a Montessori school.
Homeschooling seems like a wonderful idea, however, with the way the world is right now, we really need 2 full time incomes and Chris is going back to school, so I really need to work full time to provide for our family. And I really feel that Aeryn thrives in a school setting and I’d hate to homeschool one and not the other, it just seems weird to me.
And then Montessori is a self guided type of atmosphere. I have read the good and the bad about it and I am just not 100% sure this would help Jack. I don’t know if he has the proper motivation within himself to go through a self guided education and get a great education. I just don’t know enough about it to really make a good decision on that.
Another issue I am having is, as a kid I moved around a lot and switched schools ALOT, I hated that. I never got to build any lasting relationships until high school and I feel like I missed out on so much by moving from school to school and always being the “new kid”. But I still loved school regardless. I don’t want to do that to my kids. It’s bad enough that next year they will have to go to a new school (because we’re moving to another county soon) and that is worrying me as well. I just don’t want to bounce Jack and Aeryn around in hope to find something that Jack can thrive in. And I don’t want to do it at the expense of Aeryn either, she loves school and we’ve already found that perfect fit for her. I really, *really* don’t want my 2 to go to different schools at all. I don’t want to have to cart them from one school to another to see what may or may not work for Jack. I am so torn.
Aeryn loves school. Adores her teacher and all her cute little friends in her class. She is almost always playing with other kids and goes to her class with complete ease and happiness.
Why is Jack so unhappy in school? WHY???? Where is my sweet and happy boy?
