Now here is my disclaimer. The following is my opinion based on my own personal knowledge and experiences. If you disagree with me, that's fine. Everyone has to do what they feel is right for their own family, and I am in no way judging anyone for what they did/plan to do.
I attended a birthday party with Amelia on Saturday. It was the first time I have ever gone to one with her. Between the baby and being sick, Bill has been the one on the birthday party circuit. I don't know the parents of the kids in her class and I hadn't met most of them before. Despite my original dread of having to go to one of those bouncy places, it actually wasn't so bad. I had prepared myself for all kinds of drama and mayhem, but thankfully nothing happened.
What I had not prepared myself for was every parent asking me when A's birthday was, and what I was planning to do about kindergarten. I didn't give it much thought at first, and actually I thought what they meant was "Are you sending her somewhere else, or are you keeping her at Lippman?". Since we are planning on moving but I have no clue where, I just responded that we weren't sure, since we were shortly selling our house and there was quite a bit up in the air.
I did not realize, until maybe the fourth person had asked me, the real question. The real question was would I be sending her off to kindergarten after the next year of preschool. I was stumped. Now, I am not an educator, I know almost nothing about the education system or how things work, and Amelia is my oldest child. I thought that things still worked the way they did when I was a kid. You went to preschool when you were 3 and 4, and after you turned 5 you went to kindergarten. If you were too close to some cutoff line, which I thought I remembered as being in September, you had to wait. Case closed.
Oh how wrong I am. I can sent A to "Transitional Kindergarten". This is a class sort of in limbo between preschool and kindergarten. I can send her to kindergarten at Lippman for a year, then I can send her somewhere else for a year of kindergarten. Yup, two years of kindergarten. Or I can just keep her home for a year, getting bored out of her mind while Bill and I, who are utterly unqualified to do so, try to homeschool her in some sort of way. I'm sure there are other options too, but this is just what I picked up from the parents that I talked to on Saturday.
Again, I am no educator. I am no expert in early childhood education or child development. But these kids are just starting to turn 4. Kids change a lot in a month, let alone a year. How can you make a decision like that so far in advance? Why should you have to? A kid who is a little behind today can catch up in a heartbeat. I shall use my own child as an example. My daughter was probably the last person in her class to be potty trained. It was a nightmare. Nothing we tried worked. I was convinced that she was behind developmentally and was considering bringing in the experts. Until one day she just decided she was going to do it, and that was that. Period. Done. I think ultimately it was a combination of her just deciding she was ready, and peer pressure.
So what do I plan on doing? Honestly, I'm going to let her ride out her last year of preschool. I'm going to have her take the kindergarten readiness test, and talk to her teachers, and if they say she is ready for kindergarten I am sending the kid to kindergarten. She is smart, she likes school, she likes being around other kids. She can count, she knows her letters, she recognizes certain words. She listens to directions and sits still when she is told to sit still. Where remains to be seen, but unless a professional advises me otherwise, at that time, I'm not holding her back. But the real answer is, she's not even 4. There is plenty of time for me to decide that. I have a lot of things to stress out about right now, and my kid's kindergarten plans are not among them.
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