My son is 4 years old and started 1/2-day daily pre-school this year. His birthday's in July, so he's a young 4 compared to most of his classmates. He tends to be overly sensative about certain things so we were concerned he might have trouble adjusting. To our delight, after the first 3 or 4 days of school, he was able to easily separate from me. The key was that I had to leave so he would engage himself in a classroom activity. As long as I was still there, he couldn't allow himself to begin his day at school.
He has had good days and bad days. A good day is when he's happy, talkative, and not easily upset by anything. He doesn't always participate in class, but he's there observing. A bad day happens when he's easily made to cry and whine and does so several times throughout the school day. For example, someone accidently bumped into him, and he cried saying that child "hit me." Other things that have been known to upset him, both in and out of school, are french fries or pizza on his tray/plate (he hates them), auditoriums (he won't go into one for fear there may be people singing), having dirty hands, washing his hands in "hot" (tepid) water, shirts with buttons (refuses to wear them), among other things.
The first few weeks of school were fine. He was learning not to become so easily upset and was having more and more "good days" and participating more.
In Oct. things changed. The clasroom schedule became less predictable because of fieldtrips and Halloween. The day of his first field trip, he was so excited to ride the school bus. When we arrived at school, both the afternoon and morning classes were there, as this was a combined field trip. At some point, my son became convinced that the other kids were not making room for him in the line. He cried and cried, preventing everyone else from hearing the teacher's instructions. I took him to the bathroom but could not calm him down. He worked himself up so much that he said he didn't feel good and didn't want to go on the trip. There have been 3 trips since then and he still doesn't want to go, so we stay home.
Then in Nov. there were 2 weeks in a row that he only went to school one day, due to illness, report card day, and holidays. Now, every morning when I take him to school he cries and doesn't want me to go, or wants to go home. He gives no earlier indication that he doesn't want to go to school. He's happy up until the moment it's time for me to leave.
The past couple of days, I've eventually been able to leave him after about an hour or so. The teacher or a parent will engage him, I've been able to slip out, and he's gone on to have a "good day." But now the class is rehearsing for the upcoming holiday assembly. There's no way he'll want participate in that. This morning was yet another struggle to leave and, for the first time, I left with him crying.
He is easily able to attend a weekly Spanish class, but not pre-school. Not sure what to do. Is he just not ready?