DS refuses to go to preschool

[marytuda]

He's outside my "office" door now whinging & fiddling with the locked doornob because I won't play with him when he's not supposed to be at home. His keyworker says not to physically force him to go - which I can't physically do anyway when DP not home (which he isn't.) It's his final term there (he's 4 in August; school next Sept) and he used to go happily; but this has been going on for 2-3 weeks now. There doesn't seem to be any particular incident which triggered it. Any similar experiences? How did it work itself out?

My DS2 did this at about the same time, it was utterly miserable as there seemed to be no logic to it.
He would get really really distressed - I had to go there anyway to take DS1 to school on the same site, so staying at home wasn't an option.
The pre-school didn't want him to be forced to come, but once he was there and i had left he always settled down. We had a system were I would leave him even if he was upset, and they would call me after half an dhour to confirm he was ok. I never actually had to go back and get him but I found it very upsetting (and I'm quite hard-nosed about these things)
Part of it i think was the move to Big School can be unsettling for them, there's lots of talk about it, leaving parties get planned, and actually, for them, it's the complete unknown really, so they kind of re-trench?
Hopefully it's just a phase.
Also - I didn't try to make staying at home a "fun" option - I'd tell him mummy had very very dull stuff to do!
HTH.