Picking the proper school attire required a discussion for every selection. Each of us was equally invested, and the two of them were a voting block. While at Old Navy, I pulled out a child size Hawaiian wedding shirt in espresso with white embroidery.
“I love this!” I exclaimed and showed them the shirt.
“Okay. Where would he go in that?” my mom asked skeptically.
“Where?” echoed Thorin, making a frowny face.
“School,” I said, trying to sound confident.
“He’s getting his haircut before school, right?”
Thorin looked up at her while petting her hand. “Hair, Mommy?”
“Thorin, who are you talking to?” I asked.
“To Bubba-Mommy,” he replied. Then he and Bubba-Mommy hugged and kissed each other for what seemed like thirty seconds.
My mom must have felt sorry for me because she said, “Thorin, I think we should let her get the shirt for you. Would you wear it, Beautiful?”
“Yesith! Yesith! Yesith!”
The start of the school year arrived, and Ward and I took Thorin to school for his first day of kindergarten. I asked Thorin if I could help put his outfit together.
“Let see,” he said.
“How about the cool brown shirt Bubba let me get with these madras shorts and your brown sandals?”
What I really wanted to do was dress him in coat of armor. I was scared about the first day of kindergarten for regular reasons and Thorin reasons. Would kids comment on how he looked? Could I dazzle them with styling so they wouldn’t judge him based on almond-shaped eyes?
“Do you like the outfit?”
Thorin smiled. “Yesith. Good, Mommy.”
“How are you feeling about today?”
“No.”
“No talking about it.”
“No talking.”
Ward pulled me aside before the three of us left the house.
“No crying until we say goodbye to him at the school and we are out of his eye sight.”
“I know that; my mom already told me.”
Thorin’s teacher, Ms. Charles, was standing outside the door of the school waiting for her class.
“Hi Thorin! I’m so excited to see you!”
Thorin promptly ran to me, hugging me tightly as he said, “No Mommy! Tay! Tay!”
Ward shook his head no and made an exaggerated smile.
As I gently peeled Thorin off my body, I said in the sunniest voice I could muster, “No, Honey. You go with Ms. Charles! You’re okay.”
Ms. Charles reached out. “You can come over and hug me.”
She already had three huggers grabbing her tightly when Thorin joined them. Ward led me away.
“Stop looking at him. There’s no reason to look at him.”
I didn’t make it to the car but I was around the other side of the building when I started sobbing. Ward put his arms around me. I looked up at him, and his eyes were wet.
“You, too?”
Smiling, he said, “Hey, I’m not made of stone. And, look around here.”
Ward gestured toward other parents who were sitting in their car and wiping away tears or blowing their noses. It was an emotional day for all the kindergarten parents.
At the end of the day, I met Thorin’s aide, Mrs. Louise, whom Thorin had immediately starting calling Lo-Lo. She shared with me that Thorin was one of the children who volunteered for show-and-share. There was some confusion about what he was saying, but they were able to figure enough of it out. I was elated. He had never done anything like that before. It was a great start.
Our work schedules didn’t align with the school hours, so I enrolled Thorin in the city’s before- and after-school recreation program located at the school. We needed coverage, but it was another change added to already long list of changes. For more than two years, Thorin was in a small school with nine children in the class. In kindergarten, he was one of twenty-two students, and at the recreation program, he was one of thirty-four children. Also, Thorin was literally the smallest child in the school. Kids—always girls—would stop to say how cute he was. It was clear he wasn’t cute in a dreamy way but in a tiny child way.
Two weeks into the school year, Thorin started having bathroom accidents. I called The Pee Whisperer, who was her ever-efficient self.
“Have them use the protocol I gave you. It’s a normal response to stress. He’s facing a lot of changes. Tell them not to make a big deal of it.”
A week later, Thorin became known as “The Hitter” in his class as well as “The Scratcher” and “The Screamer,” but thankfully the last two were constrained to the recreation program. In both areas, he received time-outs, which made things more frustrating for Thorin. When I probed about the hitting in the classroom, I was told it was more like poking and pushing.
“Okay, still not okay, but let’s not refer to it as ‘hitting’ anymore. Has Thorin hurt anyone?”
The person laughed and said, “No.”
“What’s going on when it happens?”
“He’s trying to get someone’s attention.”
That sounded annoying but not aggressive to me.
Later, I asked a staff person with the recreation program about the situation there.
“When is the scratching and screaming happening? What happens before it?”
“Someone else is scratching or screaming.”
“It’s imitative?”
“Oh, maybe!”
“Let’s assume it is. Has he broken skin?”
Laughing, she replied, “No.”
Although he wasn’t viewed as aggressive, it was clear Thorin was seen as having behavioral problems. Thorin needed support with his new challenges, and we knew he was frustrated, but it was difficult for him to articulate what he needed. I decided to call The Pee Whisperer, who referred us to her colleague, Dr. Rachel.
Dr. Rachel was a lovely woman and not at all concerned about Thorin’s behavior after observing him in the classroom. She explained, “Behavior is communication. Thorin’s using these tactics to get attention because he has difficulty speaking and being understood.” I felt like I should have “behavior is communication” tattooed on my wrist.
She gave the school staff the following recommendations: refrain from giving Thorin consequences and
