Yesterday as I was prying M off my leg to send her onto the bus, she started talking about "the awful fire noise". I have been talking to her teacher a lot about M's anxiety, and the lightbulb went off in the teacher's head when we mentioned the noise.

Apparently a while back they had two emergency (unscheduled) fire alarms in one day. For the scheduled ones, the 4s and special ed teachers get a 2 minute warning so they can get their kids out before the alarm goes off. But unscheduled - no call, just the alarm like everybody else.

It sounds like the alarm itself is either in their classroom or right outside, and it is so loud that the teacher can't talk to the kids over it more than just giving the basic instructions. Apparently it is ear-piercing, and startled M badly, and she was crying from being startled/scared. She had just calmed down from the first one when the second one went off.

Now I am finding out that some of the other kids have been giving her a really hard time about it ever since. Trying to jump out and startle her all the time, yelling "boo", calling her a baby, etc.

Looking back, the teacher is fairly sure that this about the time when M's issues started. I'm not sure now if she afraid of the alarm, or the other kids constantly picking on her and trying to scare her.

Only one more week of school to go...

BGG born 4/25/05 at 31w1d




New baby girl born 9/19/06