Decision-making time

School starts Monday for both the local PS and for our homeschool. We went to Addy’s meet-the-teacher last week and it went well. I liked her teacher fine enough and I REALLY liked the other parents and kids at her table. The school she is enrolled at is in our new neighborhood we’ll move into this fall (hopefully!). Because the area is under so much heavy construction growth, nearly half or more of the students in her class were also either building and living temporarily somewhere near by or building and driving in while they wait for their home to be finished. There were plenty more who had just moved in. So no one really knew each other and I find that makes for a pretty exceptionally friendly group! 🙂 Also because of the area being highly populated by Exxon employees or other oil industry types, there is a lot of diversity that isn’t otherwise present in our area in general. So that’s nice too.

But.

I just could not shake the idea of sending my five year old baby away for what amounts to a 40 hour “work” week. It is beyond ludicrous to me. I totally get  that full day kinder is great for working families who would still have to pay for childcare if it was half day. I get that. But that isn’t our family so it makes no sense to us.

There were other things that bugged me too.

• The huge lunch room that seems to swallow kids whole. Addy gets totally overwhelmed in big, chaotic settings. It is NEVER a good scene for her.
• The heavy pressure to use the busses. And to not walk your child into the school. I just don’t like this. I get it for kids who have issues letting go but for a kid who is happy to be there, what’s the problem with walking them to their classroom?
• The extremely strict discipline system used to manage large classes of five year olds (22:1 student teacher ratio). Time outs may not seem like a big deal to most, but Addy has never experienced punishment of any kind and she’s VERY nervous about ever getting in trouble. She’s also likely to break just about every rule since they are mostly group management rules (as opposed to actual behavioral issues). So this is ia big deal to me.
•  The very VERY academic-heavy day followed by homework for the week. Addy’s a smart cookie and she really thrives on learning. While I’ve been working on this she brought me over a workbook laying out and turned to a page with a multiplication problem (6×4) that she had solved. The other day she counted to 1000 by 10s and 1s and counted to 100 by 5’s. And a month ago she counted the tiles on the wall while we were waiting for our order at Five Guys and I hadn’t even noticed until she announced that there were 71 tiles and I had to count them myself because I didn’t believe her.  We have never worked with her on numbers, ever. She just loves them and has taught herself basically the equivalent of first grade math.  I have really thought lately that she needs to be fast-tracked when it comes to math. She’s ready to learn some 2nd and 3rd grade math and there’s no way she’ll ever be taught that in school. Yet she will spend 7 hours of her day sitting at a table re-learning things she already knows. This is a waste of potential. I can teach Addy 2nd or 3rd grade math in a few minutes a day.
• The reality of ZERO playtime for my girl during the week. Addy LOVES to play. And she’s always had such a healthy independent play routine. Play is absolutely so important at five and it would be limited to 25 minutes a day and weekends.
• Time outside. Our Kindy kids have it good because they get two recesses! Unheard of these days! They get to go outside for 15 minutes 2x/day. That is not enough time in nature, outdoors, fresh air. During the only time of year where the weather in Houston is decent, she’d be holed up breathing in everyone’s germs and she’d miss the beautiful weather. Bah.
•  Oh and the 10:40am lunchtime! What the heck? 10:40? Right now she is eating breakfast at 9:30! She would starve with such an early lunchtime and school doesn’t dismiss until 3:30. And while they do have a small snack, it isn’t anything healthy or really filling. She’d have to go straight from school to dance or gym 3x/week with almost nothing in her belly but would she could scarf down in the car on the drive. NO GOOD!

These things, and others, just really bugged me.

But still, I supported Addy’s desire to be there all the while feeling pretty strongly that it wasnt the best place for her. I also feel like, in general, a child who can’t make their own choices and experiment a bit with school is often a child who yearns for what they can’t have. I’d rather she experience school first hand and shake the fantasy.

But when we started putting her to bed early in the evening in prep for her early mornings, things quickly unravelled. Who knew it would be bedtime that was her own little line in the sand? Every night was worse than the night before until finally last night she had had enough.

So we made a pros and cons list and talked about the ups and downs of both homeschool and public school and it became very evident that homeschool was the place to be. I considered trying to gently encourage Addy to still try out school but today it finally occurred to me that, despite my previous theories on this subject, I think for Addy it would just be kind of mean. Addy is the type of kid who finds something to latch onto and something she loves about ANY situation – no matter how bad. And then, even when she is beyond miserable, she is torn up about the one little diamond in the rough that keeps her from leaving behind the misery. And even when she might leave behind the misery – as was the case with dance and preschool – she would have moments of regret and missing the one thing she loved (usually a child or children). So it occurred to me today that not sending her at all was, all along, the kinder more gentle way to handle this dilemma. She is not and has never been the type to really glamorize things like some other kids do. She wanted to try school but had no real idea why. She had not built up ideas in her head about how it would be. But I KNOW that there would be parts of school that she would like and that it would be just miserable for her to  give up home or give up school.

I always said I’d let my kids choose and I guess I still pretty much did let her choose. But I was also starting to heavily leaning against the theory that letting such a little kid choose is a good idea. Sometimes kids are too conflicted, they don’t know what they are leaving, they don’t have a concept of time, they don’t have a concept of homework or life without play. All of this is the case for Addy. I was putting a decision on her that she can’t possibly make because she doesn’t have all the necessary information.  If it was Noah at age 9 or my older boys, I would feel comfortable with their choice. But Addy just feels, instinctively, too developmentally little for such a burden. And sure enough, prior to the last night that broke the camel’s back, I asked her if she’d like us to make the decision for her and she said yes.

And I also realized that I was even humoring it because she is the only child of mine that I ever felt would be able to handle both the academics and social part of Kindergarten. None of my boys were ready at this age. So having a child who I felt would do really well felt different and exciting. But just because she COULD thrive in Kindergarten doesn’t mean she wouldn’t thrive at home. And I hadn’t considered that, as dumb as it sounds. So even if she did not come to the conclusion that sleep is not worth giving up for school, Tony and I would have still kept her home.

So the drama ends without even a day of school. All that build-up for nothing. 😛 I have a feeling, though, that this wont be the last year that such drama exists. I don’t think my girl is going to be like my boys who have never wanted to go to school. I think she may be more like the girls of friends who try it out one year, come home the next, back and forth. And that’s ok! But I have to say….boys are way easier 🙂