So yesterday, Katie finished her first year of preschool. There's still two more days in the session for the other kids in her class, but Katie, Grandmommy and Papa have some beach plans in mind.
The year started off rough for Katie. She spent the first two or three months learning how to behave around other three-year-olds and how to follow directions and instructions from someone who wasn't her mommy or daddy. The initial months were especially difficult for Katie and for her mother and I, too.
After three really tough months of hearing from her teachers about Katie's struggles to adapt to the ways of a classroom, Melissa and I were a millimeter away from deciding that she just wasn't ready for preschool, and we nearly removed her from school. But we gave Katie one more - just one more - chance to show us that she could make it through a school day without fussing or having a timeout.
One school day in November - or maybe December - with both of us thinking that day would likely be her last until the next school year...she did it. She made it through the day without a fuss. Without a timeout.
And so Melissa took her back on the next school day to try again. Again, relatively good behavior.
Suddenly, the days with pretty good behavior continued to mount. And then she started to make it through her preschool day with actual good behavior. And the days of Katie's much improved behavior turned into weeks of improvement. And then it was the end of March.
The end of March witnessed the beginning of Katie's perfect school behavior. Whatever turned off - or turned on - in her brain at that time finally allowed her to breeze through each school day. We found ourselves counting consecutive days of perfect behavior. No fussing. No timeouts.
By the time she finished up her final class yesterday, we counted five consecutive weeks of perfect behavior. In fact, in the final couple of weeks of the school year, both of her teachers praised our daughter as having transformed into an "enjoyable" and "sweet" preschooler.
Thank God for a great finish to Katie's first school year.
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