Carlie in Kindergarten

Well starting Carlie in Kindergarten has been interesting, to say the least. They earn stars in her class for good behavior. They can get three a day if they don't get into any trouble. Most days Carlie has been getting 1 out of 3 stars. The first week she said repeatedly that she missed her Mommy. The third day of school she had a complete melt down at bed time. She had gone to bed as usual, but I heard her in there crying so pitifully....I could tell they weren't mad or fake tears. I went in to see what was wrong with her. She was crying because she'd taken her fuzzy purple blanket to school for rest time, and she was missing it.

I told her "Carlie, you'll get to see it tomorrow when you go back to school." And she wailed "But I want it NOW. And it's there, and I'm HERE!!" I knew it wasn't about the blanket, because that wasn't even one of her favorite blankets.

I got in bed with her and cuddled up and we talked. I asked her if she got in trouble at school that day and she said No. But after we talked a while she said "When you throw fits at school, they make you sit out in the hall." I asked her why she threw a fit, and she said she was missing me. She also said that she was upset because I was not there when school got out each day. I told her that it wasn't really any different than last year, because even though she was at our house, I still didn't get to see her until my work was over. And she wailed again "But your work is so far Away...and you are there and I am HERE." I finally got her settled down and she went to sleep.

Then next day she didn't get ANY stars, and I asked her why. She said "Well I was arguing with the teacher. She wanted to tell me how to write my e, and I told her that I didn't want any help writing my e!!!" My Mom and Dad thought that was SO funny for some reason. Hmmmmmm. They said something about "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree???"

So now a couple of weeks have gone by, and Carlie is getting more of her stars. But she hadn't read to the teacher yet at all. So I emailed her teacher yesterday and asked if she could be given some opportunities to read on her level. They are going to set up some activities so that Carlie gets about 30 minutes a day of reading, but still gets to do all the fun things with her class. So they gave Carlie a Star computerized reading test to find out her reading level yesterday. The teacher said she didn't think they got an accurate reading level though because when she went to check on Carlie she was just randomly punching buttons. When the teacher talked to her about trying harder, she did better. So they are going to test her some other ways.

But when I got home that night, I had an interesting talk with Carlie. Carlie said "You emailed my teacher, and because of that I had to stay after class and take a computer test. And I didn't like it!!!" I asked her how she knew that I emailed her teacher and she said "Because Mrs Smith told me you did." She told me that she didn't do very good on the test because she doesn't want to do special reading stuff, she wants to do what everyone else does. So I have a kindergartener who deliberately didn't try hard on a test because she wants to be like everyone else!!!! How do you deal with THAT one???