3 times in the past 2 weeks I have sat down to write a post on this blog and each time I have been interrupted by a little monster named Lillie who is refusing to take her usual lunch time nap. It is amazing how this small change has thrown my entire world. I am all upside down. I just got a good routine going, run errands in the mornings, then lunch, then she would sleep, I would catch up on emails and bills then work out for an hour then she would wake and we would collect Judd from school and do our afternoon activities. Now she doesn't let me have time to do much at all, she demands alot of my attention and those 2 hours of respite seem all the more precious now that I don't have them. I believe she is too young to drop her day time nap, without napping she is ratty and doesn't eat well at dinner time and is very quick to tantrum. I feel she may have to have a later nap in the day than she used to but I have to collect Judd from school at 2.30pm each day so I cant leave her at home by herself so I end up waking her so we aren't too late. I found out on Tuesday that Judd's school has a small school bus picking and dropping kids off, ideal for our situation as now I can stay home with Lillie while she is sleeping and wait for the bus to drop Judd off BUT upon asking the school about it I was told that the bus is full and we have to wait for a spot to open. Very frustrating considering the fact that I was never told about the bus service, there was no letter sent home, no emails, nothing. The lack of correspondence from the school has always been a problem with me.
I had to contact the principle last week as Judd kept coming home and telling me that the teachers in his class have a 'smacking stick' that they smack the naughty children with. I kept asking him and he kept telling me the same story so I figured if he was lying the story would change as he thought of new things to say but he said the same things every time and even would tell me the names of the kids who got smacks and he would show me where on their hands they got it.
This became and issue for me because I chose this school for the fact that they assured me that they didn't smack the children and only used time outs as punishment for bad behaviour. So I emailed the principle (I find email is easier as the language barrier and peoples accents seem to distort our conversations alot) again she replied straight away and assured me that they don't smack and that the smacking stick that Judd sees is a ruler used for pointing around the classroom. However the next day when I picked Judd up from school I asked him my usual questions and if he was a good boy and didn't get into any trouble and I asked him if anyone got any smacks and he said "mmmm no mummy no one today!"
So I 100% believe Judd when he tells me things, I can tell when he is telling fibs as his imagination goes crazy. So hopefully my email has brought it to their attention, as maybe the principle didn't know what the teachers were actually doing once in the classroom. In Thailand alot of traditional Thai schools still use smacking and the cane as regular forms of punishment for children and I was warned. But I know that if anyone gets any smacks Judd will tell me, he is at that age that he sees everything and tells me everything, right down to what his poo looked like that day.
Marcus and I considered for a while of maybe changing his schools as his group of friends is really limited
to one of the International Private Schools so he can be around other English speaking western kids more and possibly make some more friends. The mothers and fathers at his current school don't really speak to each other, well actually the Thai mothers speak amongst themselves in Thai and since Judd is only one of about 4 western kids there, that leaves me with no one to speak to, let alone form a sort of friendship with in order to arrange some play dates for him. I did a bit of research on prices during the week and we were both shocked to see that for just one year of pre-school we would be looking at nearly $12000 AUD! So you can imagine that Judd will be staying at his little kindergarten. I mean he is perfectly happy there and never complains, it was more Marcus and I feeling a bit guilty about taking him from his friends and family back home. It is a hard thing sometimes, yes we are all on a wonderful journey that not everyone gets to do but Lillie and Judd are too young to really appreciate what we are doing and to appreciate the sights and sounds of everything we get to see. I feel a bit selfish some days and guilty that I have taken him from everything he knew to be safe and secure and familiar. But what we are doing here will hopefully set us up to live more comfortably in the years to come and to be able to provide more opportunities for both he and Lillie.
Everyday he talks about going home to the 'red house' as he calls it, in Dandenong, he asks me all the time when we are going to go home. It makes it especially hard when I am having a homesick moment like I am today.
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