Articles Written by Parents

I wanted to share some anecdotes about my stepson Jyles' experiences with The Circle School, because to me they embody the beauty of this program. In the evening, after his first visit to TCS in September, he said to me, "You know Marianne, at first I thought that it seemed like kindergarten there. After a while, I started to feel that it wasn't kindergarten at all, but that it was like college. Finally, now I've realized that it really isn't either of those things. What it is there is life."

From the time he was an infant, my son Kiran (now age 6) has had issues around feeling safe. Cautious, perceptive, and highly sensitive to other people's energies and emotional states by nature, he is generally slow to adapt to new people and situations. He has always shown an aversion to group activities, preferring the intimacy of one-on-one interactions with trusted individuals in familiar environments. Add to the mix his intense dislike of anything he perceives as compromising his sense of control over his own situation, and the result is a challenging child, to say the least. Monitoring his reactions to any given circumstance and making adjustments accordingly has long since become second nature to me. On more occasions that I care to remember, we have had to make a quick exit from social settings to avert a full-blown tantrum.