After a Rough Start

After a rough start at school this year, Matthew has made a comeback today. The first day he was OK, meaning getting his uniform on and getting there was fine but then he started crying and didn't want us to leave when we were leaving. The second day, I was alone and I couldn't even get his uniform on because he was crying (sobbing in the corner is more like it) and whenever I tried, he kicked off and just cried harder. I decided that without Dani, I wasn't going to fight it because I don't know how I could, so he didn't go the second day. The third day, Dani was with me and with some verbal convincing, he decided to "let" mommy put on his uniform (as opposed to daddy). He cried when we were leaving but it was better. The teacher said that the first and third day, he only cried for maybe 5 minutes. Today, the fourth day, I was alone again and with some co-ercing and one time out, we got his uniform on and out the door and in the car with very minor problems. Seems like that psychology degree I got really came in handy today. It's all about your approach with a three year old, I really believe. We got there and started walking in and I just kept talking about all the fun he was going to have and what he was going to do to distract him from the fact that we were almost to his classroom and that I was going to leave him. Right when we walked in, he saw his teacher and walked right up to her and she grabbed his hand and he seemed pretty good. I said "give me a kiss" and he kissed me and as I turned around to walk out, this mother asked me in Spanish if Matthew spoke English. I told her yes and she told me that she was dropping off this little boy for the first time at school and he only spoke English. I looked over and told Matthew that the little boy spoke English but then I realized that I don't even think Matthew knows what it's called when he's speaking English vs. Spanish. For him it's speaking, not necessarily different languages. We never really label it saying OK, this is English when you say "apple" and this is Spanish when you say "manzana". Oh well, I hope he'll be able to make that kid feel better by speaking English but I don't know how to tell him to do that. We had a conversation about it later because when I went to pick up Matthew, I could tell that that boy had had a rough day. His eyes looked like he had been crying the whole time. I asked Matthew if the boy had cried a lot or a little and he said, A LOT. The teacher said he never cried even once today and he participated in everything. Apparently he has already shown his dancing talents to the class during some of their song and dance time, lol. I'm so proud of him. He has really had to do some growing up in the last few months and he's done wonderfully. He's such a big boy now and you can really reason with him.