Oh Poo. Back to school and I feel miserable again. : (

[Flllightattendant]

Ds1 has been GREAT all half term, we have been getting on brilliantly, I have loved him to bits this past week even though I was stressed out and the baby was ill. It seemed to bring us all closer somehow.
We were fine and then today I sent him back to school.
Picked him up at 3.30 and all hell breaks loose. He is red faced, silly, screeching and overtired by about 200 miles, he is exhausted and has lost the ability to be nice.
I almost cried, I had had 6 hours alone with baby to prepare for it but had forgotten what it does to him.
It really, really depresses me. I feel like he is gone all day then I get this monster returned to me at the ened of it, who is angry and miserable. Then he falls asleep on the sofa.
I miss him.

My mother is very pro school and thinks he is better off there. I am really struggling here.

Someone tell me the niceness wasn't just an illusion for a week. I am more serious than ever about HE but so much pressure from his Grandma as I get depressed myself and can't always cope very well.

Sorry, just feel like screaming. Why does he come home like this? It's horrid.

I've been stewing further on this.

There are more things to consider than just how he is during the school day - the bit you can't see.

If school is getting the very best of him, and you are getting Groucho Marx for the period it takes to get him to his pillow as soon as he gets home from school, then that's not a good deal for you or for his little sibling.

I'm imagining a child who - I don't know - gets into competitive gymnastics and is training for 3 hours a night after school every day, and school say "she's not doing her homework and she keeps falling asleep in classes" and the parents might need to sit down and work out with her whether this competitive gymnastics needs to give, slightly, or whether school needs to give, somehow, and also throw into the pot that they'd like to be more than chauffeurs in her life... I'm thinking holistically. There's a whole child to be considered here, not just a child who can get through a school day just about ok but collapses as soon as he gets home.

But maybe it's the right thing for now - that you only get the Grotbags part of the personality for 6 months or a year or however long it is until he's less tired out by it. It's as much about what is right for you as a family as what is right for him individually, I think. It's not as if, aged 4, school are going to be doing some secret marvellous learning with him, and he'll be behind for the rest of his life if he's not there all the time.

I'm grateful for your time spent stewing, Ems
Here, have a mop...

Yes. Holistically is where I was starting to explore, and it is not really selfish to want to spend time as a family, surely.

I don't give a damn about the learning thing except that he is learning about his own value and strengths through having little friends there - but also they are all trapped as it were, and there are already pressures and unhappy aspects to that.

He is more than capable of doing numbers and letters in his own time, here with me, and makes sudden progress often that surprises me.
So it is the balance we need to address. Happy all day and miserable the rest of the time is not working for me, certainly.
I think a term out might just be in order.

Have to go and read with him now, young one is asleep!
Thanks so much

I think the family is the primary unit. Getting that dynamic right is the first thing. Then you add on schools and out-of-the-house-work-for-one-or-both-parents and everything else in the proportions that fit your family right now. My holistic proportions are heavy on the not-school emphasis right now

gawd, that turned into complete psycho babble. I'll get the mop. starts feverishly mopping