Wesley was just aces in his new preschool class until last week. He’s had terrible mood swings (both at home and at school), and he was just off kilter basically the entire week. I guess beside his defiance with the teachers, he’s also been more aggressive with his friends as well. We have started working closely with the teacher and school to divert this behavior before it gets worse, and I’ve also re-instated the “stars” reward program again at home. Let’s hope this will all work out in the end. We had various theories about why this has been happening: stress from home having to deal with the long commute times… from getting everyone ready and out the door by 7:45am to make it to school through the heavy traffic. Him being paid less attention to since our focus has been mostly on Nicholas adapting to the rigorous Kindergarten program, etc… etc. But most important of all, I realized that we, the adults, have to always remain calm no matter how stressed we are. I told Alex that no matter how late we are for school, no matter how bad things are going… we always have to make sure that we try to shelter them a bit from that; otherwise, it’s too much burden to take for their little minds… especially if there’s nothing they can do to make things better. After having kids, I realized how much our own personal moods/habits/words/actions affect the little ones in our lives. Whew… the responsibility of being a parent.