"I don't want to go to school"

Today my girl cried for the first time about going to school. Previously there may have been tears but she usually fights back the tears so she is just teary eyed that is all.

She has never cried about going to school before. From the first day of kindy right till the very last, she always had a smile and was happy.

This morning she woke up and told me that she did not want to go to school. While dressing up and throughout breakfast she kept on talking about how she did not like the school. She said that she was afraid she will have her ears pulled for being naughty accidentally. I told her there is no such thing as being naughty accidentally. If you are naughty, you are naughty purposely, not accidentally.

She related to me an incident where the teachers asked them to sit straight up with arms on the table. Those who did so were rewarded with presents. The rest were asked to pull their own ears. She said that she sat straight up but the teacher did not see her and so she had to pull her own ears.

She kept on saying that she is afraid that she will be beaten by the teachers. I reassured her that the teachers will not beat for no reason and that she should not be afraid about something that has not even happened.

She seemed to be ok but then I made a mistake. We were early and not rushed. So I thought I could give her a hug before she and her daddy left for school. Normally we are so rushed, we don't have time for a hug just a quick bye bye.

The hug burst the dam and tears flowed non stop. I quickly distracted her by talking about her new roller bag and said a quick bye bye but according to her daddy she continued to cry all the way to the school right up to the classroom. Oh dear.

Hopefully, she will settle down soon, make some friends and get over her fear of the school teachers. She has always enjoyed a close rapport with her teachers and is talkative in class but now she can't anymore because of the language barrier.

Another thing, I spoke too soon about homework. Haha. They still have not distributed the books but yesterday she brought home a few pieces of paper that was supposed to have been finished in class. It was English homework. It was very simple really. Just simple matching and labelling. However, the teacher had asked them to color each and every picture on each and every sheet of paper. That was quite a lot. I wonder what was the point of that. My girl who wanted to make each and every picture beautiful took ages to color the pictures.

Then worse still, yesterday her piano teacher dropped a bomb on us. She told us that my girl had to sit for her scales trial exam on Sunday! My girl is far from prepared as she has just been taught the scales recently very quickly one after the another. She has no time to practise and besides we have things to do on Sunday. In addition, on Saturday my girl has to attend replacement classes for the CNY holiday and we have only two weekends before the CNY. Too bad. I told the teacher we can't make it for the trial exam. Its too short notice. Her Grade 1 exam isn't until June or July. Why do they have to have the trial exam now? Hmmm...

I do not send my girl for any extra activities accept piano. I do not believe that ballet, swimming, taekwando, arts and crafts, speech and drama etc is necessary. Not at this point anyway. So we have just piano. Even then, we are so bogged down. Its crazy.