Genea goes to school

Genea leaving for her first day of school a week ago. She was really good in the morning, obviously jittery but handling it ok. We did practice runs all night and she picked out her own clothes.


This is Genea getting off the bus. I think she had held it together as long as possible and she maybe had 3 seconds left of control. She has serious issues with separation and doesn't like anything new so this was a BIG deal for her.
She could not have gotten off that bus any faster. I saw her shove her way past another kid and a teacher to get OUT! Once at home, she fell apart into some good old fashioned meltdowns every day for about a week, but no worse than the usual.
I do have to say, I am so proud of her! She has handled school beautifully. I think she will excel with the structure and schedules and rules. When she came to us last year when she was 4, I was fairly certain she would not be ready for school in any way or form until she was at least 6 and then probably in special education with ancillary therapies. She was so delayed then, she was playing peek-a- boo and crawling around on the floor. She rarely talked, and intelligibility was about 25%, and social skills were an atrocity. She had never interacted with other kids after leaving Ukraine, even at the day care. Oh and was she tiny! She had Failure to Thrive developed AFTER coming to this country. She was 30 inches tall and the size of my 2 year old. She wore a size 4 toddler shoe! In just one year, July to July, she wears a size 12 shoe, and grew just over 11 inches. That's about 1 inch a month. As her therapist pointed out, hair only grows a 1/2 inch a month. So she doesn't even stand out. And she did, if you knew she was supposed to be a 4 year old, her delays were obvious. You can look into her classroom now, at 5 years old, and she just blends right in. Really, it can take a minute to even find her.
She has come so far!