When you have a kid, you might occasionally get the wind taken out of you by the most random of things. These things seemingly come out of nowhere, and it often doesn't make sense. And that's because they aren't your kid's issues; they are your issues. If Dr. Freud was here right now, he'd say they are unresolved issues from my own childhood. Since he isn't here, I'll be the one to say it. There are unresolved issues from my childhood.
About 3 weeks ago, I was talking to the center director of Julia's daycare. They moved the teacher I'm not fond of to a different classroom, and they moved in a teacher Julia really likes to team teach with the current teacher that Julia has and loves. I was commenting to the director how I'm so jazzed about Julia loving both teachers, and I was wondering when Julia would phase out of her current classroom. The director told me that it would happen when she was almost 3. Whew, sigh of relief, because Julia has 2 awesome teachers & she's got her little best friend in the class with her. So I wouldn't need to worry about any changes until at least spring. Cool.
Last Friday I dropped Julia off at daycare, and the center director comes up to me and says that she's going to start transitioning Julia to the preschool room starting in September. Huh? I wanted to say that she just told me in early August that Julia would be in that same class until she was almost 3 years old. Julia's only 26 months. The director told me how advanced Julia was and how she was ready for more of a challenge. I pointed to the kids' cubbies; they're ordered by age, and Julia's cubby is toward the bottom; she's definitely not the youngest in the class, but she's certainly nowhere close to the oldest. The center director kept saying that she was ready for the preschool class, and I went along with it and gave my go ahead to start the transition.
After I left the daycare, I went to my car and cried as I drove to work. Not happy tears. Sad tears. It's taken me until today to get deeper than a surface level processing of this.
Let me go through my school career. Don't worry, I'll truncate as much as possible:
Kindergarten: public school in Pittsburgh, PA; started a year earlier than I should have
1st and 2nd grade: private Catholic school in Pittsburgh, PA
75% of 3rd grade: Muleshoe, TX
25% of 3rd grade, 4th grade, 50% of 5th grade: Odessa, TX
30% of 5th grade: Oxnard, CA
20% of 5th grade and 20% of 6th grade: Henderson, NV
80% of 6th grade, 7th grade, 50% of 8th grade: Green Valley, NV
30% of 8th grade: Laguna Niguel, CA
20% of 8th grade and 10% of 9th grade: Green Valley, NV
90% of 9th grade and 10th grade: Washington
Community college (no 11th and 12th grades): Washington
This doesn't include the various ways junior high/high school was handled. For instance, I started 6th grade in Henderson, NV in a junior high. Then when I moved to Green Valley, 6th grade was in an elementary school. I started 9th grade in Green Valley, which was a high school. Then when I moved to Washington, 9th grade was in a junior high. Then if you count all the placement screw ups, the tally goes up even more. I was initially placed in an ESL class in Oxnard for 5th grade, which took a week to fix. After they moved me into an English-speaking class, within another few weeks, they moved me again - this time to a 6th grade class. So within a span of a month, I was in an ESL class, a 5th grade & a 6th grade class - all within the same school. In Green Valley, the school was so overcrowded that they hired a teacher mid-year. So after being in the class for a month, they moved me again when a new teacher started. The next year in junior high, I got placed in the lowest ability track of core classes. It took about a month for the teachers to figure out that I shouldn't be in that track, and then I got my whole class schedule changed.
My schooling is an utter mess with very little continuity. It didn't help that my mother would always move during the school year. I had some great teachers, but mostly they were there for the emotional support. I had been dragged all over tarnation by a mother who thought nothing of constantly uprooting me, and words cannot express the appreciation I felt to those teachers who helped a very confused girl. As for academics, I had always been a bookworm and seemed to adapt just fine to different teaching styles and fortunately never fell behind.
The most difficult part of my schooling was constantly being "the new kid" and never really fitting in with cliques that were already established. It got to the point where I knew I'd be moving in a matter of months, so why even try? I was used to being alone. I was an only child, and I stayed home by myself since I was 8 years old. I had a constant supply of books to read and things to do (video games, a computer, TV). It was easier to seek comfort in those things than try to be accepted by a group of kids. Particularly in Texas, where everything revolved around football, I didn't even want to be included in a group. So it gradually just become easier to be alone. I always seemed to have placement issues and then they wanted me to skip a grade, and most times I'd just shrug and say, "Whatever." Because, really, I'd been through so much chaos that any more chaos wasn't going to matter in the grand scheme of things.
There are two things I regret about my schooling. I regret starting school a year early and then going into the Running Start program, in which I essentially skipped the last two years of high school. My other big regret is all the chaos and so very little continuity. I don't think either of these harmed me academically, but I think they did socially. The age difference with my peers made it more difficult to relate, and with all of the moving I learned to not put much energy into friendships because within a short time I knew I'd be leaving. So why get emotionally invested since it will be gone soon enough?
As I sit here, I realize that are two main things that I want for Julia as it relates to school. I want Julia to start kindergarten when she is 5. Not 4. I want her to be 5. If she's not ready for kindergarten at 5, then it will be 6.
I want her to have continuity in her social circle. I know there are some schools that are way too small, and you're with the same exact 20 kids for all 12 years. Yes, that's completely claustrophobic. But we're in a big school system here, so that won't be the case. What I want is for her to go through multiple years of friendship with the same person. She'll have kid arguments, but I want her to have to work through them with the other person. I want her to observe how her peers grow and change over the years. That's where the real learning about life takes place. So much that school teaches you isn't in a textbook. School is a somewhat sheltered microcosm of life where kids can more safely learn how the world works and those life lessons that will see them through adulthood. That's where they learn how to make friends, keep friends, and hopefully nourish those friendships that will last a lifetime.
Perhaps this is just a regretful reflection from someone who focused way too much on academics and might push her kid too hard in the opposite direction. I don't know. I'd like to think there is a balance somewhere between academics and social learning, and I know I hope that Julia focuses on social learning quite a bit as she grows older. Not to the exclusion of academics, hopefully in a balanced way.
Of course when the center director told me that Julia was ready to move up, there was that initial sense of pride that perhaps she was more advanced than other 26 month olds. It didn't last long though. Panic quickly set in, and then I thought to myself, "But I'm not sure she's socially ready yet."
I've got to keep it in perspective. We're talking about preschool. It's not like they want her to start college. So then I tell myself to chill the heck out.
4 comments:
Wow, I hear you so much on this one. As you might know, I was homeschooled from 3rd through 8th grade, and that's probably my biggest regret from childhood. My parents thought it would be ok, because I had kindergarten through 2nd grade to learn to socialize, and my sister and I had some outside activities throughout those 6 years (playing with the neighbors's kids, gymnastics, baseball, horseback riding, bowling league, etc.)
But it just wasn't enough, and I feel like I missed out on a lot of social learning, to the point where it took me until halfway through college to fully recover. My parents say they made the decision to homeschool more for my sister's benefit than my own, a fact I resent to this day, because they could have easily homeschooled her and sent me to public school.
So yeah, I agree. Even if the kid is really smart, accelerated education is a bad idea. In my opinion, all it does is decrease social development and get you out into the real world more quickly (as if that's a good thing!)
I do think homeschooling has its place. I see it more for kids who are so extroverted that they can't focus in a school setting, and homeschooling gives them more of an opportunity to focus. And because they are so extroverted, they still have an immense desire to socialize in the outside extracurricular activities.
I don't see why your parents could have sent you to public school either. It should have been given as a choice when you reached an appropriate age. That sucks. :(
Our personality types didn't match our school situations. It's hard to make up that deficit.
My parents' rationale was opposite. Back then my sister was extremely quiet, never asked questions in class, was way too easily influenced by other students, etc. I can see why they wanted to homeschool her, though I don't know if it helped given the fact that she still has so many issues today.
I remember constantly complaining about not being allowed to go to "normal school" up until we moved back to Connecticut in 6th grade. That's when our extracurricular activities started to decrease, and as a result, I became much more withdrawn and fearful than I had been before. At that point, I actually became happy that I was homeschooled and feared going back to normal school. It wouldn't have mattered anyway; my parents wouldn't have let me go until high school no matter what I wanted. They're good people, but it was, and still is, a huge relief when I got to the point where they no longer had any control over me.
Your parents' rationale seems like a recipe for disaster with respect to your sister. The sooner you force withdrawn people out of their comfort zone, the more comfortable they'll be going out of their comfort zone later in life. Or at least that's my theory.
It sounds like you have parents who mean well. You're very fortunate.
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