Zana was right. The first 2 weeks of school was a breeze. Then we went to Langkawi, came back, got our helper, and things became haywire. He would fight us every morning, refusing to bathe, refusing to put on his clothes, refusing to get out of the car. It became quite a battle, and the only thing that’s positive about the whole ordeal is that once he gets to school, he runs to the ‘lao she’ for comfort.
So it’s been a few weeks of this, and both of us were at our wit’s end. Fische was getting to work late and frazzled, and I just didn’t want to get up in the morning to deal with it. I tried talking to Idris about it, and even in his good mood, whenever I asked him if he wanted to go to school, he’d shake his head. The confusing bit was that whenever I picked him up from school, he’s happily singing and the teachers have no complaints. He’s even made friends and seems to have picked up some good habits - like wiping his own mess off the dining table.
On Monday, we had yet another difficult morning. That was when I slipped - literally, at his school. We also had guests which included 3 other toddlers and 1 baby by the time he got home from school. He was happily playing and fighting with them for a while, and when I went into my room with the other mommies, he decided to join. He was much calmer as he sat next to our window and watched the traffic below. It then hit me, he’s just like me - we can take only so much of crowds before we run off for some peace and quiet. So I made the unpopular decision of allowing him to play hookie the next day (I was too tired to handle another day of this myself) and let him wake up, eat, play etc on his own terms.
This experiment paid off. He was much easier to handle - no fights to eat, bathe, sleep. He was singing to himself while he was playing ‘Mummy Daddy McQueen’ (he had created his own family out of Lightning McQueen and his gang). This morning, he woke up with a smile, and willingly went to bathe. Fische reported that he jumped out of the car when he saw his friends, dragged his bag into the school and didn’t even look back to say goodbye.
So it seems that little toddlers get stressed too. I guess I’d hate it if I had to follow someone else’s schedule day in and day out, being told to hurry up or everyone else will be late. I can’t forget the look he gave me when we took our afternoon nap together yesterday - it used to be a routine until he started school, but nowadays, he’s so tired, he just plonks himself on the sofa as soon as he gets home from school. On his day off, he didn’t sleep immediately - he’d open his eyes, stare at me and smile. There’s a lot we don’t do anymore, like cuddle, hug and general messing about because of my big belly. I started missing him after a while, and I guess he feels it too, going by his erratic behaviour lately. I guess we’ve learned a valuable lesson about respect and consideration - that toddlers need it as much as we do, if not more.
