Rio starts kindergarten on Monday. I’ve already told the story of our decision to send her to school here and on Babble. I’ve been alternately praised for listening to my daughter and castigated for my failures as a mom. Today I want to talk about what happened during that now-famous conversation when she asked me to call the kindergarten and ask if they had a spot for her.
I flinched.
If I’d been totally committed to homeschooling as a path, we’d be doing it today. Yes, I listened to my daughter’s heartfelt desire. But she has a lot of heartfelt desires I do not heed. We don’t watch Disney movies all day, or eat chocolate for breakfast.
We do a lot of wacky things as parents. We’re vegetarians. We don’t watch TV. We don’t buy Stuff. I have no trouble enforcing my will (or even my whims) in those areas. But Rio can smell when I’m not wholly committed to something, even if I think I have every intention of enforcing it. When she challenged me on homeschooling, I flinched and called the school.
Why? Homeschooling was never an end for me, the way being a vegetarian is. The goal, as I’ve said before, was to give my daughters the best possible education, and the best possible childhood. I want them to grow up self-possessed, confident and competent. Homeschooling looked like a good path to get there, but only if we were all going down it joyfully together.
Now, as the moment of kindergarten truth arrives, I find myself feeling a little relieved. Not because my kid will be out of the house for four hours a day. I’m sure I will miss her more than she misses me. I’m relieved because in a few days she will have a teacher who is not me who can take over responsibility for teaching her to share with her classmates, use an indoor voice, and write her letters properly. Passing that hat opens up space for me to have more fun with my daughter. I feel a little freer to take her side in an argument, to snuggle her out of a tantrum instead of teaching her more self-control, and to blow off “enrichment activities” in favor of cuddling on the couch with a movie or walking over to the bakery for cupcakes.
It’s nice, letting go of the teacher hat in her life. I’ll cheerfully pick it back up again, should school not work out as well as we’re all hoping it will. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying being a little more relaxed with my great big five-year-old girl.
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Sierra Reply:
September 19th, 2009 at 4:50 am
ha! amusingly, Rio also became very attached to flip flops this summer, and wants to wear them to school.
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