What would you do about this pre-school situation?

[hereidrawtheline]

DS has just started at a lovely pre-school, today was his 3rd session. (half days, one day a week) I dont have any major concerns but a few tiny ones and I just wanted your thoughts on it really. Each time I collect him he bursts into tears and is pretty inconsolable, but his key worker tells me he was fine up til that point. That makes sense to me, I can remember being really overwhelmed when I was a child with my Mother. Still just wanted to run it by you. But on the way home today I was pushing him in the buggy & we were chatting about school but at this time were just walking along silently, and he said "children at big school make me upset" and I said "why do they make you upset?" then had to rephrase because he patently refuses to answer any question that starts with "why" so I said "what do they do to make you upset?" and he said "children at school make me sad and bad" and then said it again about 3 or 4 more times.

I asked him if he talked to the children and played with them and had friends & fun and he said no to all of the above.

Now I know 2.7 is not the most social age!! So I am not panicking or anything. But I am a little bit worried. I ask him every week if he wants to go back next week and he says an emphatic yes, and talks about it a lot in the week, and is quite happy for me to leave him when I drop him off. I just worry he is lonely while he is there. For DS a lot of stuff is more about the anticipation than the actual event. He likes a lot of things in theory that I know he hates in reality so I am worried he is unhappy while he is there and I am not observing.

I have asked key worker (who is SENCO and also the Head) to call me sometime so I can chat with her about how he is settling in. What do you think?

Home-time was always a tricky time for my two with ASD as they had problems with the transition from the pre-school setting to a home setting. They were usually fine while they were there though.

One thing that helped was if they were given a small picture or symbol of a house to go and stick on a velcro board or velcro strip. (They had various symbols for the different activities during the day). When it was time they would go and put the symbol on the board so that they knew what to expect.

I would speak to the key worker about the social side of things but not playing with other children is fairly typical at that age. Dd (NT) spent her first few months of pre-school being far more interested in the toys and books than in the other children. I think it can sometimes seem a little intimidating for the 2yr-olds when they see lots of big 4yr-olds around them. If he is feeling sad about things then it's definitely worth asking for some reassurance.

DD is just settling in to her preschool at the moment. 2 mornings for now - to be increased. She also cries when I collect her. I know she's fine before this as I can see her in the window playng happily. I think for her she's kind of forgotten about me and then is reminded that I've been away. She calms down quite quickly. Not sure if there are any comparisons but I definitely don't take it as a bad sign or reflecting badly on the preschool.

agree with coppertop - he may just need some sort of prompt to help him with the transition from pre-school to home. I think it does take more than 3 sessions to settle in.