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Saga of Anton's kindergarten



Warning: this post will truly be a saga of Anton and his kindergarten adventures. 

Some people might recall that when we moved here I did not realize that we had to look for kindergarten like right away and waited until April or May time frame to start applying.  (By the way when I say kindergarten I am talking about a mix of daycares and  preschools which attend kids from 3 years old to 6.  6 is the magic number to start first grade.)  Anyway, back to our story – I had to have applied to at least 5 or 6 places last year and we got accepted into two.  One that was kind of far away and was only offering half-day spot.  The other place was great – we could see it out of our window, the staff spoke some English and it was a full day spot.  Well, on the day we accepted the spot the place burned down.  Thankfully, it happened overnight and nobody was hurt.  Unfortunately, they choose not to rebuild and we lost that spot.  We called our local youth administrator and he pointed us to the new place that only opened with last year so not very well known and had a couple of open spots.  By the way, according to German law all 3 years old are guaranteed a spot.

Everything seemed to be going ok.  Anton was happy going there, but there were some issues regarding his nut allergy in that staff didn’t really know what to do in case of an emergency.  Nobody at that place had that kind of training.   After months of debates, phone calls, notes written by the doctor and training provided by Chris it seemed that everything was finally settled.  Except there was an accident.  Anton got into his backpack, into ziplock bag, into the box with epipen and opened the plastic protector and stabbed himself before anybody noticed.  When they did notice, staff called me and I took Anton to the doctor to make sure he is ok.  Needless to say, the staff at the daycare and I were a bit freaked out.  The doctor was pretty mad and called the daycare to apparently voice his concern.  All of that happened on Thursday.

On Friday we went to the Christmas party at Anton's kindergarten.   Chris was in route to Pittsburgh so I took Anton and Andrei and everything was going well - boys made candles, we had some cookies, talked to some parents...  Then as I was saying goodbye to Anton’s teachers, one of them asked to talk to me and informed that Anton is kicked out of his school.  As in she is telling me on Friday at 4PM that Anton cannot come back on Monday!  We had to collect all his of things and leave.

I am really happy to have friends who fed my 3 kids and myself and gave me gluhwein because I was in shock and rather POed.  

After many phone calls from both me and my German friend, they confirmed that they will indeed break the contract.  But get this – they blamed Anton and his delayed speech and basically said that he had delays that they can’t handle.   So I spend all this week looking for a new place but that’s a story for another day …
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