Our church preschool has 62 kids in it this year! This is probably one of the most exciting parts about my internship congregation. On Monday mornings, I get to lead Children's Chapel and those are by far the most adorable minutes of my week. Sadly for you, this is not the point of this post.
I was talking with one of the teachers about the breakdown of age groups in the preschool, and how many kids are there from infancy to pre-K, etc. She mentioned that parents of kids with birthdays kind of on the cusp of grade levels have to make a decision about whether to send their 4-almost-5-year-old to kindergarten or wait another year and send their 5-almost-6-year-old. I nodded and said something about how every kid is different and some kids might not be ready, blah blah blah.
And then suddenly I was frozen with this overwhelming sense of the COMPLETELY-LIFE-ALTERING choice that that is. If you send your kid this year, he'll join this group of kids and classroom dynamics and then decide which middle school to go to with them (probably) and then which high school and then that will influence which colleges he applies to and that year's admission data will be different than the following year's, including who his college roommates are, who his classmates are, who's in leadership positions, etc. And then what year he graduates, etc., will influence what he does after college based on the job market or grad school or whatever.
Or, you could send him next year and LITERALLY ALL OF THAT WOULD BE DIFFERENT. The people who will be your kid's closest friends, enemies, lovers, etc., all depends on what year in school he is, in some way or another.
Writing it out now is causing me shortness of breath.
The coolest thing about the anxiety this is causing me is that I am MANY YEARS away from having anything to do with a preschool-age child of my own, so there is absolutely no reason for me to even care about this, let alone worry about it. THANKS, BRAIN!
Anyway, I hope you send your kid to kindergarten and watch his entire life unfold because of that decision without crippling anxiety!
I was talking with one of the teachers about the breakdown of age groups in the preschool, and how many kids are there from infancy to pre-K, etc. She mentioned that parents of kids with birthdays kind of on the cusp of grade levels have to make a decision about whether to send their 4-almost-5-year-old to kindergarten or wait another year and send their 5-almost-6-year-old. I nodded and said something about how every kid is different and some kids might not be ready, blah blah blah.
And then suddenly I was frozen with this overwhelming sense of the COMPLETELY-LIFE-ALTERING choice that that is. If you send your kid this year, he'll join this group of kids and classroom dynamics and then decide which middle school to go to with them (probably) and then which high school and then that will influence which colleges he applies to and that year's admission data will be different than the following year's, including who his college roommates are, who his classmates are, who's in leadership positions, etc. And then what year he graduates, etc., will influence what he does after college based on the job market or grad school or whatever.
Or, you could send him next year and LITERALLY ALL OF THAT WOULD BE DIFFERENT. The people who will be your kid's closest friends, enemies, lovers, etc., all depends on what year in school he is, in some way or another.
Writing it out now is causing me shortness of breath.
The coolest thing about the anxiety this is causing me is that I am MANY YEARS away from having anything to do with a preschool-age child of my own, so there is absolutely no reason for me to even care about this, let alone worry about it. THANKS, BRAIN!
Anyway, I hope you send your kid to kindergarten and watch his entire life unfold because of that decision without crippling anxiety!