a rough transition

Lucy started kindergarten this year. I was expecting this to go smoothly. Lucy was a scarily independent toddler, and she had no separation anxieties going to part-time preschool (although it was a parent-participation school, so I worked a regular shift, and there were always scores of parents about). Also, she was very familiar with her new school, having been there hundreds of times over the three years Iris has been there. Her big sister, Iris, on the contrary had an epic separation anxiety about preschool but skipped all the way to kindergarten her first day, taking to the school like a wild animal finally released into its natural habitat.

The reality is that here we are in October, and Lucy's still miserable. She's crying at school nearly every day, and she's fearful and unhappy.

Mind you, the school is as close to ideal as imaginable. Lucy and Iris are lucky to attend a delightful all-girls private school on a beautiful campus. Lucy's class has fourteen girls and two gentle, kind full-time teachers each day. There is a playground for the kindergarten and first grade girls' use only, a fabulous art program, funny phys ed teachers who get the girls to run around screeching in a most satisfying manner, etc... Everyone makes an effort to put the kindergarteners at ease, from our new head of school, who already knows Lucy's name, to our receptionist, who shook Lucy's hand and asked her to come to her with any questions. But still, Lucy is unhappy in a way which seems deep and unable to be comforted.

I thought things would be fine once Lucy made friends, and despite her unhappiness, she has already made some. However, she pines for me, and she cries often. Once she saw a woman wearing a denim jacket like mine in the library, and that set her off. Another time Iris told me that another girl had seen Lucy crying in the lunchroom (Lucy herself doesn't report her crying; I learn about it from her teacher), and in discussing that with Lucy, I learned that Lucy finds lunch to be noisy and scary (we had noticed that she ate very lightly). Lucy has bonded with her teacher, and that comforts her, but still she is so unhappy.

Lucy's teacher and I have figured out that part of the problem is that Lucy is very sensitive to noise. Lucy has always been upset by loud noises, preferring not to go to the movies. The one time I took her to a parent-child nightclub event, she was miserable and had to leave. It's common for Lucy to tell me to turn down music, complain of getting a headache from noise, or cover her ears in protest. The school, with its hundreds of girls, can be a very noisy place, much noisier than the tiny preschool programs Lucy attended or her home, and there's not a lot that can be done about that.

We had originally intended for Lucy to play after school in the aftercare program until Iris's class was dismissed an hour later, but that hasn't gone well. I now pick up Lucy when her day lets out, and we mill about near the school for an hour until we can retrieve Iris. (We've become regulars at a nearby cafe, which is not good for my healthy eating regimen, as the coffee is abysmal there but the pastries are excellent). We're also leaving early so we can park and walk Lucy to her classroom, as she finds it intimidating to walk through the craziness before classes (the girls are supervised as they play outdoors in the central part of the school before the bell rings at 8:30, and it is a supervised madhouse, with manic girls in green jumpers darting about screeching).

If Lucy were in a crappy school, I'd start thinking about a timeline for pulling her out if she were still unhappy, and I'd be considering alternatives. But it's not; it's an excellent school. Even with her unhappiness, Lucy is already learning. One day she came home and told me that the pupil is a hole in the eye which lets light and air go in and that the iris is a muscle. Another day she informed me that Kandinsky was a Dutch painter who used to paint realistically but "he decided that was boring, so he broke the rules" and started painting first mazes and then just lines. "Horizontal AND vertical lines. Two kinds," she stressed over and over. Later I saw her draw an elaborate frame, which she filled in slowly with a variety of horizontal and vertical lines.

I think Lucy has to work through this problem by herself. I can't fix this for her; I can't soften it or take it away. But she's only just-turned-six, she's still a funny little child, and it's heartbreaking to see her so persistently unhappy. As a parent I try to help my children solve problems, but there's not much I can do to help Lucy with this. She has to do it herself. It's agonizing for me not to be able to make this situation comfortable for her.