Where's Russell?

Yep. We all survived the first day back to school. Well, pretty much. Russell's teacher called me at the end of the day and told me that he was probably going to be a little upset when he got off the bus. He was. Very. Apparently, he was at PE and all of the students went to the water fountain to get drinks. Another group of students walked by the water fountains and he got confused and latched himself on to their group (thinking it was his class) and followed them to recess. So, there he was playing at recess with this other group while his teacher & several other staff members frantically tried to find him. It sounds like it took quite a long time. They finally had to call his name over the intercom, which humiliated super shy Russell so he froze & hid.

His teacher was obviously stressed about this and had a talk with him about following directions & listening. Which made him shut down even more since he felt like he was in big trouble when he didn't do anything wrong on purpose. In his mind, he had followed his class to recess (and just didn't realize it wasn't his class since he didn't know anyone anyway) but it seemed to her like he had just chosen to go play instead of being where he was supposed to be and that when he wasn't answering / coming when they called him that he was being stubborn. So, there was basically a big communication issue.


It's all pretty funny when you think about a little almost eight year old getting confused & going to recess with the wrong group while a search party is forming for him, in hindsight. He was mortified at the time though. His biggest complaint "they said my name on the intercom!" makes sense since Russ hates being the center of attention more than just about anything. We went to Cub Scouts after school and he was too exhausted to participate so he went and took a nap instead. Then, I let him choose dinner (Subway works for me!) and he fell asleep again after dinner. I wasn't sure what to expect the next morning and was somewhat prepared for a fight to get him to go back to school, but he was surprisingly the first one of the kids ready. As he trudged off to the school bus I thought my heart was going to explode with pride at his resilience. Here's hoping he doesn't get lost again. That's the sort of thing that could only happen once, right? Right?