Day 2 of our inskolning experience meant that M was stepping up to the plate. Bit of a shocker…
…it’s day 1 except everyone apart from me knows exactly what is going on. That is how it felt as we didn’t even know where to put S’s shoes and jacket as we arrived. But luckily for me, I don’t have Jill’s planner mindset and I just wing most situations and pretend that I have some idea of what we are doing. I always think that we can handle everything we come across without major problems. But today we got up against a challenge that we were not prepared for and I didn’t really know how we were supposed to handle.
First thing that happens is that S runs off and starts playing as if she has been at the preschool her whole life. This gives me confidence that the hard parts from yesterday might be a thing of the past. But then again exploring and being social has never been any trouble for her so maybe I shouldn’t have called it a victory so early. But still I did and that lasted all morning until I heard about what was planned for lunch. I don’t know about you but as part of the solid food training in our family, there has never been liquid food on the menu. So the shock that I got when they announced that lentil soup was today’s meal, I didn’t really know how to handle it. First thought: what are they thinking serving soup? Second thought: have we missed something as part of our parenting?
Yep, we were completely unprepared for how she would react to having a bowl of liquid in front of her. And eating soup doesn’t seem to be a natural experience for a girl that is tilting her spoon upside down as she is trying to get gröt into her mouth. I knew this wouldn’t be pretty and asked myself if we should have trained for it, but there was nothing we could do but to go for it.
So you might ask yourself if you should have prepared for liquid food, too? My guess would be no and in the end it doesn’t matter if the kids already know what to do or if they will learn when they get to förskolan. They are there to learn anything and everything and seeing the major improvement in how all the children reacted to going to sleep next to each other (after just one day) tells me that it won’t be long until S learns how to eat her first spoon of soup. But today was not the day for that.
If you’d like to know more about surviving Sweden with kids, check out Littlebearabroad.com. There you can read more about Jill’s family life and the multi-cultural adventure of raising a family in a foreign country. If you’d like to know more about preschools, finding out information about particular preschools, check out Littlebearabroad’s guide to schools in Sweden.
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