The First Week of "School"

** Please imagine a cute first day of school picture here. I didn't have the presence of mind to take such a photo on this occasion.**

Timothy is attending "preschool" at our church this year. I'm doing this both for his benefit and ours. He is able to regulate his behavior more effectively in social environments other than our family's, so he gets 15 hours a week to practice being "a nice friend". The flip side of this is that we have nearly 15 hours a week for some lower stress family time during which we get as much schoolwork done as possible. Mary had a piano lesson this week, we did math, reading, handwriting, and our memory verse work. Not bad for getting back into the swing of things. It seems like a win, win situation. Timothy likes going to "preschool" and doing whatever he does there, and Mary and Joey get some instructional time free of the high drama state that marks our typical family dynamic. Emmie takes a nap and afterward Mary and Joe take turns having sister time while the other one gets individual instruction. He goes to school Monday through Wednesday and on Thursday morning he goes for occupational and physical therapy for two hours in the morning. I think on Fridays we will catch up on things at home and plan the occasional field trip. It looks like this schedule will work well for us. Well, most of us. Mary's not exactly a morning person and she's offended that she must get up early (at 7:00) to be a part of the morning drop off. That just means that bedtime is creeping backward until the cheerfulness outweighs the whining.

I hope Timothy continues to be excited about his schooltime and grows in his ability to be a good friend. We're hoping that he'll bring a little of that home!!