The truth is, drop-off for the first day of school was devastating and I’ve spent the entire day sick to my stomach.
All summer long, I have been coaching both children (for
different-slices-of-spectrum reasons) to spend their first days at their new
school observing and listening. We have discussed at length how much there is
to learn from taking a step back and proceeding with care. How great it might
be to get to know people and what is expected of you before charging forth.
Yet when I circled back to check in on G on the swarming
playground, he was standing alone and shouting at the top of his lungs. Kids
were already avoiding him, five minutes in.
When I tried to stop him he said he’d made a friend and
needed to find him, though G, not surprisingly, wasn’t “sure what he looked
like.” I sure hope that’s true, that he’d made a friend and all, but I suspect
he wasn’t going about his friend-finding in the most effective fashion. In
sensory-overload situations G tends to get super-flappy, as some of us do.
Cheers and prayers for all of us first-day-of-schoolers
(workers, etc.) – it’s sense-y and people-y out there!
Love,
Full Spectrum Mama
