My boy is not like me [Parental rambling, feel free to skip]

[oloriel]

Saw a Travel Bug parked in front of Felix' Kindergarten yesterday. Thought I'd memorised the number, but parts of it had slipped my mind by the time I came home. I really should've pointed it out to Felix, who has an indefinite memory for numbers and number/letter combinations. Oh well. It was a local car, and it stands to reason that the owner either works at the Kindergarten or has a kid there, so I'll likely see it again.

- - -

Speaking of Kindergarten, Felix has been going there for almost a month now. It's been a mixed bag. He often didn't want to let me go (perfectly normal, I know - especially in this early phase), kicked up a fuss about trifles (he does that at home, too, so perfectly normal as well), or told me he didn't want to go there in the first place. (Cue feelings of guilt - technically, he doesn't need to go to Kindergarten, seeing how I'm a stay-at-home mom anyway, but I want him to go there so he learns the soft skills we at home can't teach him - you know, getting along with others even if they may behave stupidly sometimes, cooperating, dealing with frustration, communicating with people who don't know your whims already etc. He doesn't need the intellectual input (which seems to be what Kindergarten's often reduced to these days - mostly negatively, a.k.a. "Our Kindergartens don't prepare kids for the international job market well enough!" but also, just this morning, positively, a.k.a. "Kids who start Kindergarten early are more intelligent than kids who stay at home longer!") - anyway, he isn't there for the intellectual input, in which he's already ahead of his age group, but for the social input. But of course it hurts when your three-year-old tells you "Let's not go there today" and you worry that it's all too much for your little snowflake... )

The "Let's not go to Kindergarten today" generally happened in the morning, and no matter how much I told Felix that hey, Kindergarten was way much more fun than staying at home while mommy cleans up or works on the computer or is otherwise too busy to play with Felix, he insisted that he didn't want, and didn't want to let me go when we were there. I assumed that part of it was because he was still tired, which would have been perfectly understandable because his sleep schedule is... highly questionable, to say the least, but that's a complicated issue I'm struggling with anway.

Yesterday: A complete turn-around.

Now this is going to get a bit circumlocutionary, for which I apologise, but I feel I need to analyse the situation.

The odds were actually against us yesterday. Felix had gone to bed late, and woke up early (shortly after 7 - he often sleeps until 9 or even later if you let him). He didn't fall asleep again, and as I have to get up at 7:30 anyway if I want to get both kids dressed and have breakfast before it's time to drop Felix off at Kindergarten, we eventually all got up. Felix declared, as usual, that he didn't want to go to Kindergarten. I, as usual, told him how much fun Kindergarten could be.
Then, the miracle happened: Felix emended his refusal to "Let's not go to Kindergarten yet."
I, not even realising the enormity of what had happened, said "Of course not, dear, we're having breakfast first."
We had breakfast. And even before Felix had finished his marmalade sandwich, he suddenly declared, "Felix wants to go to Kindergarten now."
Yes: "Felix wants to go to Kindergarten."

I told him we had to finish breakfast, and then I'd pack his lunchbox, and then we'd go to Kindergarten. And that was what we did. When we had arrived, I helped him out of his boots and into his slippers, and Felix said "Now Mom can go home."
I thought, Wow, WTF? but said "Yes, Mom is going to go home after I dropped you off at the Katzengruppe." (Felix' Kindergarten group is, fittingly, the cat group. They other groups are hedgehogs, bears and crocodiles.)
His reply was the usual, "'Katze' fängt mit 'K' an!" ("Cat begins with a 'C'!"). The rest was completely unusual: He rushed into the room, said "Hello Felix" to his Kindergarten teachers, grabbed a puzzle, put it down across the table from a little girl who was already playing with another puzzle (without even yelling that the "other child", or the Kindergarten teacher who was helping her with the puzzle, weren't allowed to look at him!). The teacher asked whether he wanted to tell me goodbye, and he said "Bye Mom" without even looking up. His Kindergarten teachers, used to the usual drama, looked at me in surprise; I shrugged, smiled, said "Bye Felix, see you later" and left.
No drama.

As I drove home, I figured that maybe I had simply started the day wrong in the past weeks.
You see, when I have to leave home early - say, at 7, and yes, that's early in my books - I sleep as long as is possible. Before I had kids, which - alas - made earlier rising necessary, I would sleep until 6:40 or even 6:45 if I had to leave home at 7. Then I'd jump out of bed, get dressed, wash my face, have a cup of tea, grab my breakfast (this obviously required preparing breakfast in the evening) and be off.
Jörg is completely different. If he has to leave home at 7, he gets up at 5:30 so he can leisurely have breakfast, read a little, and generally get accustomed to the idea of "it's a new day". I cannot understand this at all because I'd rather sleep an hour longer than break fast an hour longer, but hey, it's his lack of sleep, not mine.
Until yesterday, though, I hadn't realised that maybe Felix was more like his father in this respect. On Kindergarten days, I'd get up at 7:30, but I let him sleep until 8:30 - as long as was possible with getting him dressed, getting him to eat his slice of bread, and getting him into the car so he'd be in Kindergarten at 9:00.

I thought I was doing him a favour because it would have been a favour to me, but it seems that this simply didn't work for him. Yesterday, in spite of the lack of sleep, he refused to go to Kindergarten "right away" but after about half an hour he was actually eager to go, right? So maybe he, like Jörg, feels rushed and stressed if he can't familiarise himself with the new day slowly, with a calm breakfast and enough time for the morning paper, so to say? And he'd rather give up on sleep than on the chance to get up leisurely?

I put it to the test today, and it worked like a charm. Woke him up at 7:45 in spite of the adorability of his sleep, and in spite of his initial sleepiness. Got him dressed, prepared his breakfast, and by 8:20, he told me that he wanted to go to Kindergarten now. (He hadn't even finished his slice of bread yet.) Dropped him off with the Katzengruppe, and he immediately ran into the room, declared that he wanted to draw, got himself a blotting pad and a sheet of paper, and sat down next to little M. "See you later, Mom", without even looking up.

Let's see what he's like when I pick him up. Yesterday, he didn't even notice that I was present because he was busy in one of the play corners - watching one of the older boys, E., operate the ball path. (E. is, as his mom told us, big on numbers, too. He proudly told me that he can count up to 19! I didn't have the heart to tell him that Felix can count to 99. In fact, if you tell him that "ninety-ten" is called "hundred" and "ninety-eleven" is called "a hundred and one", he can count until 199.) Apparently, they had been taking turns! I stood amazed. If he's still/ again in a friendly, cooperative mood again when I pick him up today, I consider this sufficient proof that my son, while definitely not a morning person, needs to get up earlier.

Go figure!