Everyone has a breaking point

For seven straight days, Evan starts his morning with "I don't want to go to school" or "I don't like my new school." No "good morning Mom" or snuggling quietly. Instead, these dreaded words which, some days, lead to awful awful breakdowns (from Evan and me) as he ultimately goes to school. Well, until Thursday, since clearly there was no school on Friday.

Monday I tried to 'bribe' him by promising a visit to his old school on Tuesday afternoon. This sort of worked, but Wednesday morning the "I don't want to go to school" resumed and Thursday was even worse.

We tried bribing/threatening him with swimming (you can go swimming 2 times or no swimming) and he doesn't seem to care if he goes swimming because "all the kids go under water and I want to be the only one that goes under water."

His backpack has a broken zipper, so I offered to take him for a new backpack if he would go to school without whining. I must have the word 'sucker' tattooed across my forehead, because we came home from L.L. Bean with a bright red backpack that has a shark on it with a handle and wheels that light up and even Ethan's mouth fell open a little when he heard how much I had paid for a chance of regaining my sanity.

But if we get through a couple of days without hearing "I don't want to go to school" as the first words of the morning, it will be worth it. And if not, Evan has agreed we will take the coolest backpack ever back to the store.