Period of Adjustment

From experience, it'll take about 2 weeks, before all the laundry is washed, all the luggage cleared away and before bedtimes become normal again. Adjusting back to the timezone in Australia (3 hours ahead) is always harder than adjusting to Singapore's. Somehow, sleeping later has always been easier for us than sleeping earlier. This past week, everyone including the kids had shown signs of jet lag. Despite shooing them to bed early, they couldn't fall asleep until many hours later. The warmer temperatures over the last few days also didn't help to make sleep come any easier.

KK had started school already and so had XX. After a break of more than 1 month, we resumed XX to his childcare center on Monday. As expected, he started crying the moment he knew he was going to school. I tried to prep talk him, even putting up a puppet show, to persuade him that it's gonna be alright but he still says "no" and finally he admitted, "I'm scared". We brought him into the room and after about 5 minutes of staying with him, we said goodbye. Surprisingly, through his tears, he waved back.

When I went to collect him at about 12noon, he'd just finished lunch and went to the toilet. He doesn't look very happy still but he's walking around on his own and not sobbing in the teacher's arms like the last time. The teachers told me that he only cried for about 5 minutes after we left and he's been a really good boy, playing and eating like the others. I was so glad to hear that and of course, to encourage XX, I praised him. He proudly told me that what he did at school on the way home, like a big boy. I thought he had conquered his fears and the worst is over. But I should have guessed otherwise when I asked him if he'll like to go back to school again and he said no. He became a baby again the days after whenever we mentioned to him about going to school again. Tears will start to well in his eyes and he'll plead he doesn't want to go to school. The word "school" is now a taboo word at home, sure to bring tears and fears to the face of our otherwise happy boy.

This morning we had to send him to school again and we didn't tell him anything as we changed him and fed him milk. But when he finally asked me where we're going, I didn't want to lie to him, so I told him "school". This started his negative reaction. Last I heard from the school, he wasn't doing so well in school today.