Moving cheese

"I'm worried about him"

Teacher Patty had come up to me when I was picking Alex up at preschool to talk about Alex's behavior since he started Winter term last week.

"He doesn't listen, he's out of control, he's angry, he's...well, he's like a different kid."

I knew he'd been acting like this at home, I had no idea he was acting like this at school too. He LOVES school and last term had shown so much improvement in his behavior I was certain he was on the way to being ready for Kindergarten next year.  But now, well, he's worse now than he was before he started preschool at all.

I told her that the only thing that had changed since last term was that I started working.

"Ooooooh. Well, that would do it." Teacher Patty said nodding her head "he's having trouble adjusting to Mom being gone."

Thing is, Alex doesn't usually have trouble adjusting to anything. He LIKES change. He's my easy going kid.  Also, it's not like I'm gone all day, I'm home by the afternoon. Not to mention, he's still at home with Dad, it's not like we've sent him off to daycare where he's in a strange environment with strange people. 

Now granted, John is a stricter parent than I am. I've always been a bit lenient, I pick my battles with the boys and only really dig in my heels if they're doing something I feel is totally unacceptable.  But John doesn't put up with nearly as much as I do and I've actually gotten on board with this and so Alex has been suffering through many more timeouts than before.

But it's not all bad, I've been trying to make up for my being gone in the mornings and all the extra discipline at home by making sure Alex and Max get to do lots of fun stuff. Much more often than before we're going to museums, the zoo, the park, indoor playgrounds, etc., etc.  I've been making a point to do something one on one with Alex at least once a week.

I guess that's not enough though.  I'm hoping that this big change in his behavior really is just him adjusting to our new home life.  I'm just going to try to give him even more positive attention, try to do even more stuff with him one on one. I'm also going to make a bigger effort to get our family on a routine. I'm really at a loss as to what else I can do.