Thursday, January 24, 2013

Parenting Against the Rules

This fall, James was supposed to move into the pre-school program within the same church that has their current MDO program. Only, they require that children be completely potty trained to enter that program. By completely potty trained, that meant that he'd have to handle it all on his own and if he had 3 accidents - they'd kick him out of the program.

This seems like a recipe for disaster for a family that is determined above all else to let these boys handle the potty training without any pressure from us or outside sources. I expressed my concerns over this rule to our current MDO director, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that we had some other options.

She said that we could hold James back in the MDO class and reevaluate at Christmas-time... or even leave him there the whole year next year. I couldn't be more relieved! I love the women that are in that part of the building, and the boys really seem to respond well to them. They will be back in the same class next year, and I'm pretty excited about that. They have the rest of their lives to be separated, so one more year of security isn't so bad.

The pre-school program had the option of a 3 day per week program, which is great... but that would mean that the boys would be on opposite days which was less than ideal. I typically use my MDO days to run errands that aren't easily done with children in tow, and for doctor's appointments -- so it was going to be a logistical challenge on top of everything else.

We already know that James is a bit of a late bloomer -- in terms of his growth, and I want to focus on celebrating his milestones rather than setting him up to fail in a program that he isn't ready for. It just isn't necessary to push him like that right now. It may become that way in the future on certain issues, but right now -- I'm happy just letting him be a sweet innocent little boy figuring his way in a big crazy world.

The next school year, they can move into their regularly aged programs -- with James going to the 4 year old class and Tyler to the 3 year old class. I'm totally at peace with that, and couldn't be more grateful that God lead us to this little school when we moved here. It was the only school at the time that would accept Tyler because he was under a year old at the time and I needed help getting us settled into our new house... what a gift it was to be blessed by these wonderful women and their ministry to our family.

1 comment:

  1. So glad they could work with you! No need to pressure them!

    ReplyDelete

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