Publication Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Guest Opinion: Why mom isn't ready for kindergarten
Guest Opinion: Why mom isn't ready for kindergarten
(March 16, 2005) by Lucy Rector Filppu
The festive red balloons in the Palo Alto School District office beckoned us to celebrate. We had filled out our application, attached our property-tax receipts and signed our names. Our first child is going to kindergarten!
Someone please give me a long time-out.
After all these years at Palo Alto's Preschool Family we've been getting our son ready for kindergarten. But along the way he forgot to get his mom ready, too.
I have several good reasons for not wanting -- or perhaps not being ready -- to cut my apron strings from preschool.
Sure I can push him out the door and drop him off at school -- but turn him over to the powers-that-be of elementary-school education?
The truth is, he may be ready to go, but I'm not ready to let him. Suppose he sneezes and no one hands him a hanky? (And there are other tissue issues, too).
What if some other, perhaps bigger kid, picks on him? I taught him to use his words, but deep inside I want to pack body armor -- no, "heart armor" --in his backpack next Fall.
If emotional fortitude could replace wrinkles, Botox would have no business with moms. I'm three-plus decades beyond age 5 -- you'd think I could act it. But many days the status of my son's social life renders me an emotional wreck. Play date doesn't work out? I despair, I judge.
If my son gets in a playground tiff with another kid, he moves on. I stew. So who's too emotionally vulnerable for kindergarten?
Often I forget that my son, like all young children, is operating with a new memory hard drive. My memory, on the other hand, is just about shot. How else to explain all the times I read a book to my children and mere moments later can't recall a single event in the story? Surely my amnesia would not go over well in kindergarten.
For my son, the idea of doing homework is part of his excitement about "big" school. Yet if you ask me what I think of homework, I'll break down the word and tell you about crayon marks on our carpet and laundry stacked to the roof. Yet another sign that I'm far too cynical for kindergarten.
Most 5-year-olds are an amazing blend of egocentricity and compassion. During the endless downpours this winter, my son worried about where homeless people sleep when it's raining. I, on the other hand, hoped we wouldn't get a roof leak and once again questioned the high cost of living in sunny Palo Alto. I even lack the heart of a kindergartener.
According to preschooler.com, incoming kindergarteners need to be able to identify at least six parts of their body. I identify six parts of my body like this: big, bigger, droopy, achy, squinty and graying. Since these words are from my daughter's toddler book, it's just another reminder that I'm not up to kindergarten level.
Thanks to years on a computer, my handwriting is part hieroglyphics, part emergent scribbling. Can I decipher my grocery list? Some days. Can I neatly print my name? Debatable. Ask me to print out legibly the whole alphabet and I'll scream for my laptop! Nope. I'm not up for any kindergarten fine-motor challenges.
All I have to do is look at our local school playgrounds to know I'm not game for any kindergarten gross-motor adventures, either. In addition to stuffing my hips down all those slides, I just can't stomach the idea of galloping, climbing, leaping, spinning or chasing for exercise. In other words, I'm way too lazy to be in kindergarten.
My son and his friend's latest flight of fantasy is about aliens. For hours on end they create elaborate UFO scenarios, complete with monsters, aliens and an assortment of heroes and villains. Such "out of this world" thinking reminds me that I'm too "of this world" with my ideas. Sad but true. Adulthood has robbed me of my joyful imagination -- the birthright of every child.
When I think about what is expected of kindergarteners these days, I'm sure glad my name won't be called on the first day of school.
Yet when I look at my son sleeping or cuddle him it's not kindergarten I worry about. It's everything. What will happen to him at school? In love, failure and disappointment? In life?
Let's face it, this journey called "raising a child" is scary. That's why we can give thanks to our kids, our courageous, glorious kids, who lead us where we need to go.
Starting with kindergarten.
Lucy Rector Filppu has lived in Palo Alto for six years and works part time as special projects editor for Bonus.com, a children's Web site. She and her husband, Len, are grateful for their best teachers: a son, almost 5, and daughter, age 2. She can be e-mailed at loosy@earthlink.net.
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