April 8, 2004 - Thursday
I took the boys to Harry 's future school this afternoon for a little outside playtime with some of Harry's future classmates. He knows Rip already, but it seemed to me that it couldn't hurt to see Rip in the new school environment and to get a little bit more comfortable with the idea of switching schools. It's a little hard to know how important that is. Most of the time Harry seems excited about it, but every now and then he says he wants to stay at the old school. I usually try to meet that with empathy, saying how hard it is to do something you've never done or go somewhere you've never been. And that it's perfectly normal to be a little anxious. That approach worked well before when Harry was moving up to Pre-K and seems to have worked so far this time. But last night at bedtime, Harry opened up about his anxiety a lot more than usual.

"Will that lady be there?" he asked.
"What lady?" I said, having no real idea what he was talking about but quickly realizing that it was sincere and concerning him about the new school.
"The fat lady."
"What fat lady, Harry," I asked, scanning my memory of the hour we'd spent there a month ago.
"The one with the milk things on her and the glasses," he said as only an innocent child could.
"Gee, I don't know if she will or not, Harry. Did she make you nervous?" I said, now remembering Miss Maria, a shorter, rounder woman with a somewhat toothy smile and glasses and who had been wearing all black the day we were there.

I've heard wonderful things about Maria from Mary (Jeremy's baby-sitter who knows this school well), but can understand how a small boy coming upon here could be intimidated. And, of that day we were there, I can remember a distinct moment when Harry's demeanor changed, after which he became clingy and asked to leave. For a four-year-old, this was serious stuff. So, I empathized with Harry that she might have looked a little scary, but then talked about how it's "sometimes" not really fair to not like someone or be scared about them just because of how they look. I found a couple of examples of people Harry knew whose race and gender made them a little out of place at times. He seemed to understand and today was happy to go visit.

When I called to arrange the visit, I learned that Miss Maria would be there with the kids outside when we got there. I mentioned my conversation with Harry to the administrator and maybe it got back to Maria, maybe not, but right when we got there, she came up to Harry, said hello, and invited him to the playground. Then she called to all the children and asked them to say hello to Harry who would be starting there on Monday. She was wearing blue. Harry seemed fine.

It turns out there are a lot more rules at this new school. Harry, doing what he's been doing at the other school, quickly broke three of them. Maria said, "we have a rule about sliding down slides on our bottoms." "We have a rule about not jumping off the top." "We have a rule about playing with sticks, because we don't want anyone to get hurt." Poor Harry, I thought. But, he didn't seem to mind. He just stopped and followed the rules. She said he was a very good listener. I asked him after a little bit what he thought about Miss Maria. He said she was nice.

The rules at this new school are something that both give us comfort and make us a little leery. When the boys mother and I visited there the first time without the boys, we were amazed by the almost unnatural way the children sat quietly around the table playing with their play-doh or eating their snacks. It's certainly very different from Harry old school environment. But, we hear such good things about this new school, including from parents who invariably say the kids love it there. It's an awkward example, I suppose, but my theory on this is has a little to do with something I've heard Igor Stravinsky once said about composing music. He was talking about atonal music, but he said something like "without at least some rules, you can't even begin." In other words, even genius works better within known guidelines and parameters. For a child, just trying to make sense of a very difficult world, it's not that hard to imagine that clear, easy to follow rules and codes of conduct that all peers follow, could be a great comfort.

Anyway, we'll start to find out about Harry there starting Monday.


Comments, Opinions?