Jack’s take on things

We’ve been having a few issues with Jack lately. He’s been misbehaving, a bit more aggressive than usual, kind of rude to people and not wanting to do anything out of the ordinary. On Wednesday he wouldn’t get in the pool at Swiming Lessons. He’s not scared of the water at all, we just had to change our session and he’d never seen the kids or teacher before and didn’t want a bar of them. I pretty much had to throw him in the pool. Then today at Kindy, he refused to go on a “walk through” of the pre-primary with the rest of his class – completely freaked out. He’s just turned 5, he’s had an ear infection recently, there’s a new baby on the way, Dad has been super busy at work – it could be due to quite a few different things but when we had a chat this arvo – the tears started streaming because…

– What if I fall out of the plane on the way to Africa
– I don’t want to learn the other language because then you won’t be able to understand me
– I won’t know Nicky’s name or Juddy’s name or Shaphan’s name
– I won’t get to see my friends
– I won’t be able to play with my transformer car – there’s too much sand and smoke in Africa
– But what if there’s a hole in my wall and the sand comes in, we won’t be able to fix it cos there’s not shops there?
– What adults will look after me if you have to go out?
– How can God look after me if I can’t see him?

So we have a bit of a cry together – because I’m sure sometimes it will just suck. And then we talk about Skype (try explaining that to a 5 year old), and how Big Jack is coming to visit, and that Caleb is going to be there, and that we’ll do the same school work as everyone in Perth, and that we’ll still speak the same language. But it’s got him worried – and I’m not really sure what the best way to approach this is.