Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before COVID, they had been best friends. They’re both 4. DS kept going to school during COVID, as we’re essential workers, but his friend did not. Just found out his friend is now going back to the school, but has been placed in a different room.

We could request a change, but DS is being placed in an accelerated program (at the recommendation of the school) that we think would be good for him. Apparently his friend has been talking about DS all summer. DS has made some new friends, as young kids do, but I’m sure will be upset to find out his friend is in a different room.

Just wanted to say this sucks. I’m sure they both would have been in the same room without COVID, but my guess is the school is placing his friend in the regular program, solely because he hasn’t been at the school for months and so they can’t evaluate him to see where he is.

time for DS to leave the dumb dumb behind and move forward- college applications are only 14 years away, now is not the time for sentimentality

I love this PP

Curious what preschool this is.

Honestly, I think this is a very ordinary disappointment at the start of the school year that kids have to deal with, but it's still okay to feel sad about it. (Previous posters have been, in my opinion, unnecessarily mean to OP. Even if your life is worse, it's still okay for other people to be sad.)

It's much harder for preschool kids to maintain friendships over mediums like Zoom. My 4-year-old is disappointed not only that they won't see their friends in their classroom, but every opportunity to see kids outside their cohort, in person at school, has been deliberately cut off to reduce the chance of transmission. Otherwise the kids have gotten playground time together, so DC has been able to keep up with their friends from other classes, interact with older/younger kids from beforecare/aftercare, etc. on the playground, etc.

Some kids are different enough at a young age to usefully require something different than the other preschoolers. At my kid's preschool, last year they had a PK4 special reading group for the kids who were already fluently reading chapter books, so the kids could read books in common and have discussions, rather than being taught the alphabet.

Anonymous wrote:
What I'm side-eyeing the most is that this preschool has an accelerated program and that they won't place the friend in it because they haven't had a chance to evaluate him to determine his abilities, at 4. WTH kind of preschool is this? Are they 4 or 14?

Exactly what I was thinking. And a follow up for the OP: Do you have to pay extra fees for the extra classes?