Counselor's Helper

As parents, we think we’re pretty smart. Smarter, in fact, than the teachers and others to whom we hand over our children for eight or nine hours a day. Our course, we’re not. We think we can handle problems better than they can. We don’t even consider seeking their help. They’re our children, dammit! We know best. In truth, we don’t know much.

One of the afterschool teachers told me she thought Chloe should meet with the school counselor, Ms. Leventhal, about her playground anxiety. Gee, why hadn’t we thought of that? Melissa wrote a note with the details: second-grade boy, hiding behind the play shed, fearfully scanning the playground, stays to the side alone while watching the school basketball games. She related how, when she picked up Chloe at 3:00 one day last week and suggested going to the playground, Chloe hunched her shoulders and said insistently that she didn’t want to go. She noted that the behavior is unusual for our social, happy-in-school girl. She related how when we ask Chloe whey she is hiding and won’t play with friends, that she gets upset, says she doesn’t want to talk, or says, “I don’t know.”

We scheduled an appointment, and the next day, unbenknownst to us, Ms. Leventhal summoned Chloe to her office. I learned about it over dinner when, after she had recited much of the day’s activities, Chloe asked slyly. “Dad, don’t you want to know what else happened today?”

“Sure! What else happened today?”

“I went to see Miss Leventhal.”

Chloe said it as if she was revealing a secret. Then she eagerly related the highlights, to her, of the conversation. She was going to be Ms. Leventhal’s special helper! Ms. Leventhal had a project for her! She was going to clean up her office! T.J. was going to help, too!

The next morning, I left for San Francisco (Isaac Maycock bar mitzvah) and Melissa met with Ms. Leventhal. She had asked Chloe about her favorite thing to do in school (drawing) and in afterschool (drawing), and other questions to gauge her general comfort in school. Meeting with T.J. was designed to demystify him in Chloe’s mind. She could see him as just another kid, not someone worthy of fear, stress, or anxiety, for whatever likely-impossible-to-determine reasons.

Later that day, they met, they tidied. Chloe reported the events excitedly and matter-of-factly. One more day's adventure.

They Test. She Reads.

We love our public school. We love the teachers. We love the principal. We love the other parents, the energy, the community. Do we know enough to love the education? Impossible to say, after five months.

But we know this: Chloe couldn’t read full sentences in September. She can read full books now. She reads the weather report on the back page of the Metro section of the Washington Post. “Today. Rain. High 53. Low 34. Saturday. Partly cloudy. High 51. Low 39.” Our favorite forecast is for a “wintry mix.” We love how she says “wintry mix.” She also now can scan the agate list of other cities. Fairbanks, Alaska, is a favorite because it's cold enough to trigger exaggerated expressions of incredulity (though the concept of minus 32 degrees must be confusing on many levels). Without my asking, today she found and reported on San Francisco, because I'm traveling there next week.

In “reader’s workshop” in her classroom, each child gets a bag of four books they select from a level-appropriate box. Chloe is in the highest level. The books have two short sentences on each page. “We need to talk about that,” a teacher says. Weeks ago. Can we get her some harder books? We’re still testing.

The sympatehtic librarian tells me that kindergarteners aren’t allowed to take out books. But she’ll sign them out to me. We take out three the first week—Mr. Putter does something, Nate the Great and the Phony Clue, Cam Jansen does something. She breezes through the first, concentrates and makes it through the second. Has more difficulty with the third, which has more lines of text per page, narrower leding, slightly more complex words.

The librarian is gone after Scrabble club. But she leaves the door open for me to return with Chloe and check out some new titles. Chloe and I browse the shelves. I show her how the books are group by subject. We pull books off the shelf and put them back. She settles on another Nate the Great, the same Cam Jansen, an Oliver and Amada Pig, and, to complete a class assignment, a book about the Earth.

As soon as we get home—early, with plenty of time before dinner—she sits in one of her little chairs in her living room “office.” I lie on the couch under a blanket. She opens one of the new books—Oliver and Amanda’s Christmas by Jean Van Leeuwen—and reads it aloud. All 56 pages, nonstop, pausing only to show the class the pictures, or tease the class by occasionally refusing.

Fear and Insecurity on the Playground

When do we develop insecurities? Fears that can’t be controlled. Irrational anxieties of which we can’t be disabused. When is the absence of self-awareness replaced by the very essence of it?

A couple of months ago, Chloe mentioned a second-grader, T.J., the friend of a brother of one of Chloe’s classmates. She was excited by him. “T.J. was at Isabel’s house!” she said. Then one day she reported a concern: T.J. said hello to her in the hallway and she didn’t like it. Another day T.J. shouted her name too loudly. Another he ran up to her quickly—too quickly—and greeted her loudly again. “I don’t like it when he says my name.”

This I understood. When Chloe becomes comfortable with a person, she is open and outgoing. Until then, though, she can be painfully shy, tucking her chin to her chest, not looking the other person in the eye, whispering an inaudible greeting, retreating into her shell like a turtle poked with a stick. She doesn’t explain it; I don’t think she can. And I try not to ask. I just encourage her to speak loudly enough so others can hear her, explain that people are just being polite, that people like her and want to be her friend, that it can seem rude not to look at someone who’s talking to you. On one hand, I’m glad she’s selective about friendship and trust, and not overly gregarious or crazily reckless about whom she extends a hand. On the other, I want her to be self-confident and cordial and welcoming to familiar people who welcome her. A fourth-grade teacher told me yesterday that Chloe still dips her head when she says hello. My heart sank.

So T.J. When I picked up Chloe at afterschool one day, the older sister of one of Chloe’s pals told me that Chloe was standing behind the shed on the playground and wouldn’t play with anyone. Just stood there. The image was devastating, our little girl alone and afraid. I thanked the friend for telling us—a smart and mature revelation for a second-grader. Later, I gently asked Chloe why she didn’t want to play with her friends. Chloe meekly, embarrassedly, admitted that she was afraid of T.J. Did he say something mean? No. Did he hit you? No. Did he scare you? No. That’s when she said he ran up to her and said her name too loudly.

I told her she shouldn’t be afraid of anyone on the playground. That it is a place every kid is entitled to play. That she shouldn’t hide behind the shed because the teachers need to know where she is. That her friends want to include her and miss her when she’s hiding. The teachers promised to watch her. Mr. Jones, the tall, dreadlocked aide in Chloe’s kindergarten classroom, is her protector. He pledge to keep an eye on her, and he told Chloe to tell him whenever she felt uncomfortable.

I picked up Chloe early one afternoon. We exited the gym to the playground. Chloe’s head ducked to her chest and she pulled on the hood of her sweatshirt. “Hi Chloe!” a sweet-looking redheaded boy said happily, not terribly loudly, completely unthreateningly. Head still bowed, Chloe meekly whispered, ``Hi.’’ She turned away from T.J. She picked up the pace.

Melissa thought Chloe had a crush; she remembered the feeling. At 5 1/2, though, I said? That doesn’t seem possible. For a few weeks T.J. vanished from the conversation. Then, yesterday, Mr. Jones told me Chloe won’t play with anyone while watching the school basketball games after school. She’s worried again about T.J. (He doesn’t attend the afterschool program but does play on the playground and go to the games with his babysitter.) Mr. Jones spoke less with concern than disappointment that he couldn’t her to stop worrying about the boy.

Then today. Another afterschool teacher pulled me aside at pickup. Chloe refuses to play outside after school, she said. She seems worried about a particular boy. She constantly looks for him on the playground. She seems scared. The teacher just wanted me to know, and I filled her in and asked her to keep me posted. Chloe stood to the side. She knew what the teacher was talking about. She always knows what people are talking about.

I didn’t bring it up then, or over dinner (at Neisha, a Thai restraurant a half-block from school, but the Pad See Ew “didn’t taste the same” as at our usual Thai restaurant; that and she nearly collapsed in exhaustion into her plate) or at home. Maybe tomorrow. But what? How do we get her to overcome this first real anxiety or insecurity or irrational playground fear or whatever it is? I contemplate calling T.J.’s parents, but can’t compose the script. Your son seems like a great kid—and I have no evidence that he isn’t—but our daughter is afraid of him? Your son says our daughter’s name too loudly? Your son has prompted and irrational obsession about and fear of your son? Can our daughter meet your son in a neutral place, to see that he means no harm?

I want to protect her from the T.J.’s of the world, imagined and real.