Preschool #2: the marshmallow that broke the camel's back

A's feeling better. Friday is our official check-up, but he is ornery and running around and happy with only vestiges of a runny nose.

Today we went to check out the other preschool vying for contention as the place where A goes to get enriched twice a week. On paper, it sounds fine: focused on kids with speech issues, small classes, structured play, 1-to-3 teacher-student ratio. I thought it sounded like it was better suited to A's needs, actually.

Physically: It's small. There's no outside area to play in, no play structures. There are some climbing things inside, but not a lot. It seems clean and the toys are in good shape.

We're twenty minutes late because I got lost. (It's in an obscure area, and I get lost easily.) We join in time for circle time, which is more of a semi-circle but that's not the point. They sing some songs, which is more of the teacher singing sometimes with a CD while the kids sit in their chairs.

I notice that most of the kids (five others) don't seem to be having any fun. A has fun with the singing.

Then circle time is over and it's activity time. They're doing snowman pictures, gluing pieces of paper together to make a snowman. The kids sit in a half-circle while a teacher comes by and gives them something to glue to their paper. The kids don't pick what to glue or are given working glue to play with, just pieces to stick to the paper. The snowmen all look suspiciously the same when they're done.

A is bored. He wants to play with the toys.

The teacher announces snack time, and I think, "Hmm, maybe this will re-capture his attention." The snack is Juicy Juice grape juice box, Scooby Snack cookies shaped like dog biscuits, and strawberry marshmallows. Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. Only my indoctrination as a consummately and sometimes detrimentally polite citizen keeps me from yanking him out of the chair, out the door, and home to our organic-o-rama of low-fat yogurt, apple slices, and diluted organic juice.

A eats his marshmallow and cookie and asks for another. He eats the second cookie but not the second marshmallow. The juice box is history.

They begin to play a game, a matching game, match your card to a picture on the poster. A goes first and quickly. Then he gets bored waiting for it to be his turn again (because it takes about ten minutes, people, to go through six kids who don't all match things yet). He heads over to the bookshelf, picks out a book, and starts flipping through it. (Ah, yes, that would be my son.)

The teacher takes the book away and tells him to sit in his chair. She tells him not to do things by saying, "Thank you," in that "Thank you, you're done now," way. This is not how we say thank you in our household. Thank you is what we say when A complies with what we've asked him to do. She takes the book away and he's pissed. I calm him down, but he doesn't want to sit in the chair.

Then it's story time, so they get to move from the chairs to a big stuffed animal and listen to a story, then it's the bye-bye song, where the kids individually get farewelled and get to leave the teacher's sitting kingdom to wait for their parents. A is farewelled first, picks up the book the teacher took away from him, and sits behind her, looking at the pages. I subdue the compulsion to give him a high-five and a fruit leather for subverting the paradigm.

I talk to the teachers after class, if nothing else to make sure this was a typical day, typical activities, typical snack, but the whole time I'm thinking: it didn't look like the kids had any fun. It's way too early to teach A that school is no fun. An hour and half is too long to expect my two-year-old to sit quietly without serious entertainment.

And I pretty much outright despise anyone who scolds a child for looking at books.

So tomorrow, he'll start at preschool #1. The snack there was bagels and cream cheese and healthy Goldfish knock-off crackers and they specifically asked me not to bring cookies or candy as a snack for him. I feel a lot more comfortable leaving him there.