Letting Go

Yesterday was one of the most difficult experiences of my life.

It was Connor's first day of preschool.  For anyone who knows the history, Connor has never really liked being away from home or away from me (and Kelly...but I'm his primary because I'm home).  He's a homebody in the most extreme sense of that word.  He's also pretty introverted and prefers the company of people he knows.  He DOES NOT like new situations.

Last year, we pulled him out of a 2-hour a day program because he despised it.  He was 3 and just not ready.  I still feel like we made the best decision for him.  This summer, he got pulled out of swimming lessons because it was such a traumatizing experience.  Again, I feel like we made the right decision for him at the time, in the circumstances.  He's not ever really done any extracurricular activities, because he doesn't want to.  He has no real interests that we can figure out yet.  Granted, he's only 4...

So, despite making a series of decisions that were best for Connor in the moment, I think we created the problem that happened yesterday.  Connor completely lost his shit when it was time to go to school.  The plan was for his sister to walk him to his classroom where he would be met by Ms. Summers and Ms. Handley - two people he has known and who have known him for nearly two years.  He love them and they love him.  He's been to their classroom and we've been talking about school for months.  There were no surprises, nothing scary about what he was doing.  Hell, there was nothing unknown.

But still, he lost his shit.  It went down just before we left.  He got ready without issue, knew he was going to school and knew that it was going to happen today.  But as we left the house, he started crying.  And I don't mean just a little whimper.  It was a complete, fear-based cry complete with begging us to let him stay home and spoken wishes about school going away forever.  He clung to us, he screamed when we put him in the car.  The entire way to school, he sobbed and begged and carried on.  It was so bad that I texted his teacher and asked her to come get him.  I then changed my mind when that seemed to scare him even more.  When we got there, we pulled out of the car line because there was no way that he was going to get out of the car easily.  He was refusing to move.  We parked and got the girls out of the car and then talked with him.  We got him out of the car and the terror in his voice was heartbreaking.  He hadn't eaten breakfast, he was complaining of a tummy ache and he was fighting the girls' hands as they tried to lead him away.  When we realized that nothing was going to stop this from happening, he tried to grab me and Kelly's hands so that we could walk him in.  When we didn't let him, he lost his shit even more.

We finally convinced him to start moving and Kelly and I stood back and watched him go.  The walk into school is a long one and he stopped multiple times.  At one point, Kelly wanted to go to him, but we didn't.  We waited and he started moving with the girls again.  Finally one of the teachers saw what was happening and took his hand.  She led him, no nonsense, to the preschool classroom door.  Kelly and I, both of us crying, climbed into our van and drove away.

It was the single most exhausting, emotional experience of my life.  I have never felt so incredibly helpless to give in to my feelings of protecting him.

And yet, I was completely aware that the very best thing I could do was remain calm and force him forward.  I didn't cry in front of him.  We didn't allow him to fall completely apart, reminding him calmly and constantly, that he was ready for this and that he would be okay.  That he was safe and everything was going to be fine.  We stood firm and forced him away from us.  It was the only right thing to do.  There is a huge part of me that could see through the emotion of the moment and recognize that this was at least 75% our fault.  By allowing him to opt out of every activity and program we have tried to put him over the last 2 years, we allowed him to believe that an extreme reaction (even one that is based in real fear) would get him out of it.  I could see, and still can see, that our emotional response to him feeling unsafe furthered and created more fear.  Far from ever protecting him from anything, we have allowed him to sit in his fears and not learn that he is okay without us and that he is perfectly capable of navigating new situations without hiding behind us.

I'm not sure why it has been so different with Connor.  I have thought a lot about this and I still don't have an answer.  With Bailey, it's always been a matter of holding her back.  Not letting her get too far ahead of her maturity or to overwhelm herself.  She has bounded into new situations without looking back even once.  She is fearless, or she is completely comfortable working through her fear, without us.  It's never been difficult to let her go.

Connor is so different for Kelly and I. We both struggle to let him stretch his wings and he is perfectly happy to allow us to coddle him.  But it's not what's good for him.  Watching him sob and stop walking and be so completely afraid of a completely safe situation was like a big huge light being shined into my eyes.  It was glaringly obvious that he expected us to save him from a new (and scary to him) situation.  We had failed him and he was the one who had to suffer because we had not prepared him.  I cried as much for that as I did because it was just hard to watch him walk away.

Of course, he had a great day.  His teachers reported that he did just fine - excellent, in fact.  He loved school.  He came home raving about how much he loved it and ready to go back.  Last night, when Kelly was telling him that she wouldn't be there and that he was going to just jump out of the car in the car line, he said "Don't worry, I'm not scared anymore".  The best part of his day yesterday was riding the bus home.

And once again, parenting levels me and reminds me that even the most well-intentioned actions can have unintended consequences.  I can't say that Kelly and I will be completely changed parents from this situation, but I can say that we have learned a very hard lesson.  Watching him go, seeing him come home happy and whole and perfectly fine without us, taught us one of those hard lessons that we never wanted to learn and desperately needed to.  Every parent has moments where they realize that they are, in fact, the person standing in their child's way.  Yesterday was our moment.

And it was fucking hard.