Since there were a couple of openings available in pre-school, Evan and his friend Sean moved up from Toddler 6 to Pre-School 3 today, about two months ahead of the rest of their friends.
Compared to Olivia, Evan is very quiet and likes to play by himself. So I was little worried how he is going to fit into a class with a bunch of four to five and half year olds and being the youngest one there.
To talk about what happened at the drop off today, I have to mention the movie “Cars”. We got the “Cars” and “The Pirate of the Caribbean II” poster from the newspaper a couple of weeks ago. And since then, the “Cars” side has been Evan’s favorite and he has been begging to see this movie. He even told me which one he thought was a girl car and which one was a boy car based on their color and “voice”. This past Saturday, the whole family finally went to see it. We all loved it and the kids have been talking about their favorite characters and the funniest part of the movie the entire weekend.
This morning, Evan brought the poster with him to daycare. After we dropped off Olivia, Evan said: “I am going to my new class.” Great! This was a really good sign (I was prepared for all the crying). So we went inside Toddler 3. The teacher gave Evan a warm welcome and Evan just found himself a nice quiet place on the carpet and opened his poster.
Because the poster is quite big, almost immediately, it drew the attention of five boys and two girls who played nearby. They made a circle around Evan and started to comment on the characters in the poster. Apparently they all saw the movie and I noticed that most of them were Olivia’s old friends before she moved up to the Kindergarten from exactly the same class last year. These boys and girls are now five to five and half years old. Compared to Evan, the boys looked huge.
So with the poster, it seemed that Evan, the new guy, was suddenly so popular. I wondered how he would react to these kids surrounding him who were a lot bigger and a lot more talkative than he was. He did not appear being intimidated. He just took a look around at them and then looked back at his poster again.
One of the boys pointed at the lighting McQueen and said: “I like this car the most.” Evan immediately claimed: “He is my favorite too.” Then another boy noticed “The Pirate of the Caribbean II” poster on the other side. Without getting permission from Evan, he flipped the poster and exclaimed: “Oh, cool!”
Evan does not like the pirate movie, or more the way the pirate looks. So he flipped the poster back. The kids started to talk about the “Cars” movie again and he just sat in the middle and listened (I wish I had a camera to catch this moment). Whenever someone attempted to flip the poster to the other side, he would put his hand down on the corner that was already being lifted and try to keep the poster on the “Cars” side. But he would not use his words to tell others what he wanted.
I left the daycare with my heart hanging in my throat and all sorts of speculations flying in my mind. Are those boys going to “fight” Evan over the poster? If so, will he be able to stand up for himself? What if someone tear his favorite poster by accident? He will be so so sad. Even though Evan is very tall for his age, he looks so small compared to these five and half years old. Are they going to be nice to him? What if they bully him? Thinking about it, I could already see him feeling wronged and crying for mommy.
The day quickly passed with these worries popped up in my mind once in a while. When I picked him up at the daycare, the teacher told me that Evan adjusted to his new class extremely well today. He himself told me that he had a good day too. Still, I could not help but ask him: “Were those big boys nice to you?”
