Gwyneth earlier days at School
# Before school
Gwyn used to sleep at 10-11PM, an energetic night owl at night, she used to wake up at around 9 in the morning. Her school starts at 08:00AM so there needs to be a quite big change in terms of her schedule. We prepared her a few days before, supposedly it should be weeks before but we don't have a good reason, we just thought it was more practical to go through it considering there were other life priorities as well.
# First day at school
14 July 2025, Gwyn started her first day at school. I and my wife were not expecting much, we put a mental note that the first week would be tough, most of it would be just crying all the time at the school and it would take some time for her to adapt.
She was able to wake up at 7AM, she didn't even cry when we woke her up earlier. We had our nanny to prepare her food ready before she woke up. She ate her breakfast, not much got into her stomach maybe around 40% but it's ok, but it was not bad. She wore her white-grayish school uniform on her first day at school, a bit oversized but still looked neat on her.
The school is close by, just a 5 minutes drive. We arrived right on time, we heard there were many kids crying, they are supposedly around the same age as Gwyn. The teachers greeted us, it made Gwyn almost cry because it's the first time she met the teachers, but we were able to calm her down. We could see at her face that she's trying hard to hold the cry. The school was a hybrid montessori school and we were not allowed to get into the classroom nor wait outside, otherwise it would make first timer harder to adapt because kids at those age will always want to go to the parents instinctively, so we move away slowly after we handed Gwyn to the teachers, we just look at her from afar and trust the teachers to take care of her.
I went directly to the train station going straight to the office, my wife waited at cafe naer the school. 90 minutes passed and she went to pick up Gwyn, Gwyn came out of the classroom, she's still crying and then my wife hugged her tightly, it's hard to calm her down because she was sobbing quite intensely. The teacher said that Gwyn cried all the time during the class, no high expectation though we were expecting that. Gwyn showed off the paper flower she got from the class while still sobbing. Then day went by like usual, Gwyn was a bit fuss and not eating as much as usual, maybe because she's in bad mood.
# The next day
Gwyn unexpectedly woke up at 4 AM and had a hard time to continue sleep, after some struggle she was able to sleep calmly at around 5AM and woke up around 7AM. Breakfast was not good, she ate misua (some kind of Chinese thin noodle) but only maybe 50%.
We drove her to the school with lower expectation than the first day, she ate around the other 20% of her breakfast portion. On arrival, she didn't even want to go outside the car but we were able to convince her that her friends were waiting. She walked by herself to the school door and cried loudly when we handed her to the teacher, we were quite convinced that she would be crying all the time during the class.
That day, I worked from home, so we went to a nearby coffee shop and got some work done. We went back to school right before end of school time, we could hear the high pitch crying sound when Gwyn was called to go home, didn't expect much, but anyways she was smiling! She looked happy, the teacher said she cried at the beginning but she was able to calm herself while eating her yams snack, she even said good bye to the teacher. Apparently the high-pitch crying was coming from other kid.
I was surprised, during the day we gave Gwyn affirmation and asking her multiple times whether school was fun and whether she wanted to go to school again, she said yes to both questions consistently. So I can't wait for tomorrow to come!
# The third day
We woke Gwyn up at 7AM and said "Gwyn, let's go to school" then she promptly got up, her mood was noticabily better than the previous days. She ate all of her breakfast, full portion, things were looking great. Then when we wanted to clean her up she's unexpectedly refused to wear her uniform and started to crying out loud. We were not sure what she wanted, knowing that Gwyn is a big fan of Totoro Movie so we showed her a scene of her favorite character Mei in Totoro movie wearing a school unfiorm, still didn't work. School time is near so we decided to bring her to school first with intention for her to see her schoolmate and hopefully willing to wear the uniform. We arrived at the school, I parked the car then Gwyn suddenly cried out loud and wanted to go home, we're running out of idea so we decided to bring her to school with her tshirt on and brought the uniform to the teacher as well. The teachers there were able to understand the situation, they said they'll help to change Gwyn into her uniform later when she has calmed down.
We picked her at 09:30AM, apparently her teacher had managed to dress her in her uniform and she had not cried at all. So I think we'll just to stick with this kind of challenging situation until she's used to going to school. One of the thing I put note is all the other students above her levels look motivated to go to school, their parents just drive them to the parking lot and they go to school by themselves and they cheer when they meet the teachers, doing high-fives and all that.