Skip to main content

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 …
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

School update

It's been almost exactly 2 months since the last time I wrote here.  Our summer has come and gone as well as 3 weeks of school have passed.  The life has been busy but I knew that since all the kids are in new schools and our schedules are completely different from last year.  We are still trying to figure stuff out but anyway ... Our house looked like that most of the summer  Night before school Anton has started 1st grade.  He goes to school for kids with hearing issues and from what I understood the kids in his class are all over the spectrum regarding their issues.  Anton does not have a problem with hearing but his brain does not process what he hears at normal rate and Anton's teacher knows how to work with him which has been good so far.  The school is a little bit further away but he gets picked up and dropped off right in front of our house and it's going good.  He leaves the house at 7:15 and comes home at 15:40 3 times a we...
11 comments
Read more

Random notes

Wrote this last week but never published :( My plan was to write about Anton and his school a bit. Or about how German language acquisition is (after being in Germany for 4 years).  However ... life!   Last week Andrei was home Tuesday and Wednesday because the teachers held parent-teacher conferences for those 2 days and kids had no school.  First time it's happening this way because in other schools meetings were always held either before or after classes.  After having him home for 2 days and meeting his classroom teacher, I learned pretty much nothing new - his grades are good but he needs to talk more in class.  That's what I got out of a 30 minute meeting.   Friday Anton was home because his school starts Carnival celebrations early.  Monday and Tuesday all the kids were home because again Carnival - Rose Monday and for no reason for Tuesday.  Anton's extended celebrations continued into Wednesday.  I am not a fan...
5 comments
Read more

Medicine in Germany

I knew two things about Germany before we got here - food and medicine are supposed to be really good here.  Today's topic is medicine that we've encountered so far.  It has definitely been different than what we are used to. Anton has had 3 bouts with bronchitis in 3 months and every time he had to use steroids to get rid of it.  The last time we went for a check up to make sure he was in the clear, the pediatrician said that we should use the steroid medicine until the "bad season" is over which is somewhere in March or April.  I questioned the use of a steroid as a preventative measure for 2.5 year old and she said that it wasn't a BAD steroid, so it was ok.  I came home, looked it up and didn't like what I saw - not a lot of research has been done on this particular medicine so far and it might cause some psychological, growth, and other issues.  And it's only being sold in Germany at this point.  I forwarded that info to some more medically info...
4 comments
Read more