Emma

Well, Mike and I have made the decision to send Emma to Kindergarten instead of Pre-K. I tell ya, this has been the hardest decision I have ever had to make as a parent. Last Spring, after talking with her preschool teacher, who is a big advocate for the pre-k program, we decided to send Emma there instead of Kindergarten (since she has a late birthday, and will be one of the youngest in her Kindergarten class). Yes, that meant 3 years of preschool, but if that's what our little girl needed, then we would do it. So we made that decision, and felt confident about doing it. But over the summer, as I saw how much she developed every single day, I kept weighing the decision. On Saturday, Emma and I were walking down the sidewalks downtown, holding hands, and she pointed to a sign in the window, and said, "Look, mommy, sale!" Then she sounded out the word and said it again. She has been reading words, by sounding them out. And then we were at Barnes and Noble, and a lady (who ended up being a teacher) heard Emma speaking, and she asked me how old Emma was. I told her, and she asked me if she would be going to Kindergarten, and I told her about pre-k, etc. She became quiet, and observed Emma. And she told me that if Emma were her child, she would send her to Kindergarten. She asked me if Emma had an extensive vocabulary, and I told her yes, because she does.

But, in the end, I know that it's up to me. I am the person who knows what's best for my little girl, and my mind knows that she needs to go to Kindergarten. My heart, on the other hand...I would love to keep her home for one more year. But that's not fair to her. She is such a bright little girl, and I know she will continue to flourish in Kindergarten. So, there is open registration on Thursday, and we are going. I plan on me (and Emma) meeting with the teachers, seeking their advice, and putting in my teacher recommendation. And I know they will agree with me...she's ready to go.

I told Mike that I hate feeling like we made this last minute decision. We could have registered her in April! However, my heart is feeling so heavy today, that I feel somewhat relieved that I didn't know for most of the summer--this way, I only have 2 weeks to feel sad and worried! School starts August 5th--2 weeks from tomorrow.



Here is one of my favorite articles! I always read it when I am feeling sad about letting my babies grow up...


"On Being Mom" by Anna Quindlen

"If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above the chin.

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted , well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations - what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons…What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, capurtured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6,4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I had done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.”