When I picked up J at his dad�s yesterday, he was completely out of sorts. He told me that school is boring because all they do is play. There was more work at the M_ontessori school, he said, and he never gets to read anymore at the new school. He was obviously tired and a little frazzled. So I fed him some dinner, gave him a quick bath, and we settled in with a book we bought over the weekend. (Scuffy the Tugboat, a fond memory from my own childhood.) We decided to take turns reading.

After we finished the book, he started talking about school. I asked a lot of questions, and he told me everything he could about the new school and what he�s doing there. As he talked, he began to look calmer and happier, and pretty soon he seemed okay again. We talked about how hard it can be to do something new and different, and how proud I am that he�s growing up and trying new things. We talked about missing his M_ontessori classmates and teachers and work.

This morning I reported all this to J�s father. I asked him to keep a positive attitude, encourage J to talk about school (because he obviously needs to, but doesn�t know that because he�s just a little kid), read with him every night, and get him into bed early. I suggested that instead of focusing on what�s NOT happening in school and what he�s NOT doing that he used to do, let�s channel our energies into doing everything we can to help him through this adjustment. I think this should be a higher priority than addressing curriculum issues, at least for now.

I hope this will put an end to the nightly phone calls wherein J�s father complains that the school is too easy, J isn�t being challenged, the teachers are too young and aren�t qualified to assess J�s abilities, J is bored and developing a bad attitude and will fall behind and will become unteachable, and if he doesn�t just go to first grade now we�ll have a disaster on our hands, and blah blah blah. If he doesn�t stop making these calls then I will have to stop answering the phone, because honestly? I can�t take care of my kid and my home and myself and my work, AND shoulder the responsibility for keeping his father calm. I can�t, and . . . I just can�t.

It might cut into the time I�ve set aside to fret about not being pretty, and I won�t have that.

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