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Its the beginning of a new school year and today for the first time both my boys are off at preschool. My first child free day in 2 years! What do I do with myself…?

I remember the first day I dropped Noah at his preschool in New York. I was anxious and nervous about how he would react to me leaving him despite a long transition period at the preschool during which we attended in the afternoons together for a couple of months. We had previously not managed to replicate the successful first separation at church and thus had actually stopped attending due to the amount of crying and trauma felt by everyone. But on his first day of preschool, having just turned 2, Noah hardly looked back when I said good bye and left him. He was happily playing and exploring in the classroom play kitchen with a class mate.

I however, was not so composed and walked home in the sleet and snow with tears stinging my eyes – tears do actually sting when its below freezing outside. My doorman offered my a consilatory rub on the back as he opened the door for me and commiserated about how hard he found it dropping his son at school for the first time.

Besides a couple of days of tears when Noah returned to preschool after the Christmas break in New York, the most crying I have had to deal with in relation to preschool drop off, has been Beau’s crying when we left Noah at preschool and Beau didn’t get to stay too. That even happened this morning – we dropped Noah off first and Beau cried the whole way back to the car because he wanted to stay and play with the play dough too! Meanwhile at his new preschool 10 minutes later, he marched off, uber-confident, yelled a “Bye Mummy!” gave me a quick cuddle and kiss and off he went with his teacher exploring his new playground. I meanwhile, still experienced some tears as I headed back to my car and headed home.

I am thankful though! My sister has had to cope with a crying child everyday of preschool for almost a year. I passed our GP on our way into preschool today, tears streaming down her cheeks as she left her infant son in care for the first time. My own mum had to cope with me crying every day of preschool for two years. I may have sent my son to his first day of preschool with a scratched nose and a black eye, but he was happy and excited about starting at “Beau’s Preschool” like a “Big Boy”. We will see how he is at the other end of a long day! Fingers crossed.

Although the seasons are vastly different across 2 different continents, both my boys turned 2 a week before starting at preschool, were expecting to become big brothers in approximately 6 weeks time and even wore the same pair of shoes! My babies, turning into big boys!

Post Script: Day two of Big Boy Preschool did not go so well and neither did week 2 or 3 or ….you get the point. The reality of preschool for my little Beau took a day to set in but lasted weeks.

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Posted by Bree Hulme, 18th January 2014