Hug Twice

As I said in his introduction, CJ attends a half-day preschool M-F through the public school system. At the suggestion of his pediatrician at his 3-year-old well child checkup, we had him evaluated for a speech delay and it was determined that he had a significant delay in expressive language. We first tried a two day a week half-day program, but that wasn’t providing enough consistency to meet CJ’s needs. He has always been a child who is slow to adapt to new things, and the unpredictability of his schedule (he was still attending his mainstream preschool on the off days) wasn’t working for him. So we had a meeting with the public school system and decided to move him to a 5 day a week early childhood special education program and drop the mainstream preschool altogether for the rest of the year.

Well, with this change came an option to change CJ’s transportation. I had been driving him to school every day and picking him up, and intended to continue to do so. However, most of the other children rode the bus to and from school, and this was not lost on CJ. CJ is fascinated with buses, as maybe all 3 year olds are, and was very excited when he realized *he* could ride the bus. I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea - he’s only 3, and a bus seemed like a huge step. The whole bus debate came to a head though when CJ went on a field trip with his class to the library and rode the bus. That was it. CJ had a meltdown at school when I came to pick him up, and expressed as well as a child who is a year behind speech-wise can - “Bus mommy, bus, CJ bus, bus please bus.”

I thought a lot about it over the next several hours (after driving CJ home under huge protest), and realized that my resistance to the bus was all about me and not about CJ. He’s my baby still, even if he’s three, and the idea of relinquishing that much control over his whereabouts frightened me. I knew with the rational side of my brain that he would do fine on the bus and he would have fun riding it every day. But the idea that someone was driving around with my child without me - it scared me to death. But once I realized that my resistance was about me and not about him I knew what the obvious choice was.

I called transportation that day and signed CJ up for the bus. It took a few days for it to take effect, so there was time for me to get more used to the idea, and honestly, it’s been a week of CJ riding the bus now and I’m still not used to it. The bus has carseats and I feel like he is safe, but still watching him ride off in the morning, waving out the window at me, pulls at my heartstrings a little bit. It is almost like he’s started kindergarten already in my brain. Where does the time go… I wish I knew how to hold onto time a little tighter.

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