Jaden The Crying Jedi

I have this 20-month-old Jaden who has been gifted with an exorbitant amount of energy, as well as huge tear and mucus ducts. I am both envious and exasperated by how he can wail for the full two hours that he is dumped at the centre. He is a new boy, and probably the youngest too – perhaps that explains his unwavering persistence to “teacher, teacher, open door, open door” every time he grabs hold of my skirt. When he does so, he concurrently leaves some of his goo on my clothes and arms. When I wipe up the goo that has dripped onto the Dettol-mopped floor, he can even disrupt his crying for a while to help me point out the glob of goo that I missed out.

I have mastered how to sneak in short periods of audio relief – lock him in the classroom with me as I sweep the biscuits dribbled with saliva on the floor before the next classroom session begins. I try to do and extend doing all sorts of mundane tasks in order to keep Jaden darling’s “open door” focus at bay. He has helped me to wipe the tables, sweep the floor, rearrange furniture and throw away the soiled tissue I use to clean his face.

When I finally got him to sit down quietly and observe a class with Mrs Rajan singing tone-deafly and flashing alphabet/number cards, he placed his hand – four times smaller than mine – so casually and unknowingly on my thigh, the way Ly does when we sit next to each other.