It would have been nice if we'd been told that they'd moved C to another kindergarten teacher. It would have been nice if the school had updated the district transportation department that he was not in afternoon kindergarten but in morning. It would have been nice if at any step along the way someone at the school had listened to me.
Because?
When your child has anxiety disorder, you make the effort to be very structured. Your child needs structure in order to cope. The unexpected, which is difficult enough for the average individual, is torture for the child with anxiety disorder.
So when I made the effort to map out my son's day for him so that he would know what to expect? Yeah. Wasted effort. We arrived to find he was not in the classroom he expected with the teacher he expected. I had to have someone restrain him so I could leave him in class.
He expected to ride the bus home. I gave this information to his principal, very explicitly. Except that he didn't have a bus home BECAUSE NO ONE TOLD TRANSPORTATION HE WASN'T IN MORNING KINDERGARTEN. So they assumed I must have meant the bus to the Unnamed Youth Organization that will providing his afterschool care beginning next week. So my son WHO HAS ANXIETY DISORDER got stuck on a bus to someplace he wasn't expecting to go. After spending three hours in a room he wasn't expecting to be in with a teacher he wasn't expecting to have and had never met.
This is what my head did about an hour ago:
UNACCEPTABLE.
For this mother, who didn't know where her son was and couldn't get through to anyone at the school on the phone after finding out from the transportation department that her child wasn't on a bus home because that bus home didn't exist.
For this sweet boy, whose first day of kindergarten was supposed to be fun and exciting, not scary and traumatizing.
When I arrived at the aftercare place to pick him up (they were really confused, not expecting him until next week) he was completely undone. He didn't understand what he'd done wrong.
Needless to say, I'm girding my loins for a full-on confrontation with his school. After I finish wiping my tears and maybe having a nap.
