Tobin is in his first year of Chinese Kindergarten. It has been an interesting semester.
He mentions a lot of his friends by name, he tells us what he does and says he has fun and enjoys his day, his teachers seem genuinely kind and concerned about behavior. His behavior has been a consistent topic at pick-up time.
Now, before we get into a few details, let me just say that Tobin is a charming, and hilarious little boy who is all boy, but plays well with his sisters. At school, around other rambunctious boys all with no siblings, it is a whole different ball game. Not to mention it is 25-1 student-to-teacher ratio, so how they know all that is really going on in the stories we hear I am not so sure about.
Here are some things his teacher has told us he has done:
1. hit
2. scratched another kid (he left a mark and for that we took the family lots of milk, this is what you do when your kid hurts another kid, seriously, standard practice).
3. pulled chairs our from under kids as they sat down
4. climbed between the bathroom 'stalls' (short walls)
5. tried to take shoes off of kids
6. and many days they have said: 'no problems today' but that is about 2x/week
So far we have stuck with keeping our kids in school and it has gone well . However, we have heard quite a few horror stories when it comes to a foreign kid in school. These stories usually have to do with major bullying and are usually with boys. But so far, at not yet four years old, Tobin is holding his own (and could be the one bullying) and we are keeping a keen eye and ear, and lots of prayer. Always lots of prayer.
