5 years old!

A big Milestone
Two milestones, in fact. In the last couple weeks Luke has started Kindergarten and turned 5. He’s not a preschooler or a toddler anymore.
5-year old Luke is still struggling with emotional outbursts and anger issues. He yells at his parents, hits his sister, breaks his toys and throws monstrous fits. He is terrified of Thunderstorms and still wakes up nightly because he is scared, or has bad dreams.
Luke has two loose teeth! His bottom front ones both loosened up in recent weeks and we are waiting with anticipation for them to fall out.
Luke stopped napping during the week. His school day does not include nap or rest time, so he trucks right on through until he makes it home in an exhausted, frustrated mess. Everything upsets him when he is overtired. Dinnertime was a disaster, food was thrown, mean words were shouted, sisters were hit – all in all a mess. He is getting better now, 3 weeks in, and seems to handle the lack of naps better.
He does homework now too, 6 assignments every week to be completed for 20 minutes each day. To say we are meeting that quota would be a joke. Our average school night goes like this:
4:15 Luke gets off the bus. Ayi gets him home, has a snack, and then plays outside or inside with friends.
5:45 Mommy and Daddy get home from work
6:00 Dinner
6:30 Try to do homework
6:40 Collapse in frustration and go have a bath
7:00 Watch a TV show while nodding off on the couch
7:30 Fall into bed and go right to sleep
We got a good shock when Luke only got 50% on his first week’s homework. And his sight word test? A disaster. Kindergarten has real grades and real tests and real homework. Somehow I feel we’ve been catapulted from happy-smiley Preschool where a good day involved playing cars nicely with classmates – to fourth grade with huge expectations, major new schedules and real educational goals.

Oh and he plays violin too, because all children should learn a challenging string instrument at age 5.  Really.

5 Years old

Advertisement