First week of school (mobility scooter)
I'm a teacher, but my school goes year-round. ;-)
So... my kids' elementary school had this thing where they locked all the gates but one on the first day, with a frank admission right in the flyer that parking is always tricky on the first day regardless - which led me to literally have at least one restless night filled with strange nightmares about not being able to find parking. (Also, the new school year kind of snuck up on me and the day before school was jam-packed with the kids' physical therapy, work, a theatre meeting, and gymnastics, so I was really stuck!) The school laid out a red carpet and had a big balloon archway thing. It was cute, I guess? But I'm rather pragmatic, so... *shrug* Parking, yo.
We brought my son's new mobility scooter, parked illegally in front of the dumpsters/next to the sidewalk, and rolled across campus to get to that one open gate. (Otherwise all parking is either across streets or along unpaved areas far from the main gate. Kiddo's handicap placard is on the way but not here yet... though I don't seem to remember the handicap spaces even being available on this drop-off morning.) Then I took the scooter home.
I was greeted on that red carpet, among a mingling crowd of parents, students, and staff, by several teachers. His PE teacher went over the gym class plan again.
I walked him to his classroom to hang up his backpack. A friend from preschool/church called out his name and hugged him. :) Then the friend turned to me and asked, "Is he still growing?"
"Yes," I answered. "He'll keep growing until he's a grown-up. Just... more slowly."
Another friend, from Big Sister's class, came over with a friend to say hi and introduce the friend and my kiddo.
"He's so tall," they kept saying, over and over (mm hmm.), patting his head.
"Really," said the friend. "When I met him, he was only this tall--" she held her hand to somewhere above my son's eyebrows, "--and now he's this tall. You've grown a lot!"
"Do you pat your other friends on the head?" I asked the girls.
"Um!" they answered, looking at each other, trying to show that they pat each other on the head while really demonstrating just how silly that would be and giving up the argument.
I took him through the office to remind him where the bathroom was, and he was DELIGHTED to see how the bathroom was set up for him. They got him a foldaway seat + step combo thing just like we have, except in his current favorite color blue. They added a lock at his height to latch the door and show when the restroom is occupied or vacant. The step stool is custom-built for his size and slides under the sink. It's perfect.
When I got him after school, he. was. exhausted.
His teacher and I were texting later that evening, and she told me after school let out, he was so tired that he hung out in the assistant principal's office, enjoying her primo air conditioning (kids with dwarfism get extra hot due to lack of surface area... seriously.) and telling her about his favorite colors. The assistant principal told me yesterday (two days later) that "he was almost crying" and just wanted to go home.
The second day of school, he seemed a little better. By then, kiddo and his dad had both requested that kiddo start using his mobility scooter at school, which I hesitantly asked his teacher about. (It's quite new and he has a tendency to zoom. Plus... it kind of gave me a hard shake out of a longstanding pattern of denial about just how hard it really is for him to get around. I mean - we take him hiking and either carry him or allow the hike to take as long as necessary, which by one measure meant a 25-minute hike took three and a half hours.)
The teacher talked to the principal and other staff members about it, and they decided the scooter was a great idea. They told me how tired he was. How at recess, he just sat with the teacher and wasn't even willing to go out and explore the play areas. The scooter is well-marked with 4" handicap stickers as information to the general public.
Today he told me that in Spanish, all the other kids colored but he didn't, because colored pencils are hard to use. There's so many little things that we work around or take for granted at home and were easy to deal with in preschool, and it's exhausting figuring it out for elementary school, and hard and sad to iron out additional details through trial and error.
But you know? We're only three days in. And his teacher is awesome. The whole staff is awesome. Several friends from his preschool are already there, so the social adjustment seems easy, and that's the hardest thing for parents to do anything about. He's making new friends, too, because he just has the most wonderful personality.
He asked me the other day what the name is of the little girl who is out there somewhere that he will marry someday.
Yeah, he's the best. It's hard to see things that we didn't need to give a second thought to with Big Sister, and that I barely give a second thought to in everyday home life out of habit, and that became so normalized to me through time with Little People of America (especially the weeklong national conference this summer), be revealed as such a big deal. The staff members are awesome and careful and thoughtful - perhaps even to the point of making it feel even bigger to me.
It reminds me of when I was in labor with that boy. The epidural made me almost faint, so I shouted with all my might (which was barely audible), "I feel faint" and sent the whole room into a sudden panic. Their panic, not the epidural-gone-wrong, scared me. Now, the tender loving care of the staff to my kiddo's physical constraints, while awesome, is also really shaking me up. He's just my boy, you know? He's just my boy, an ordinary kid. When the accommodations are all ironed out - that will be perfect. :)