My daughter turns two on September 17th. In Texas (as in some other states, I am sure) the cutoff for beginning school is September 1st. So, she will miss the cutoff by 17 days and when she enters Kindergarten she will be almost six years old.
At first, this was bothersome to me. Being from new York, whose cutoff is in December, I started Kindergarten when I was 4 (since my birthday is in October) and I graduated high school when I was 17. Since my daughter is a fall baby as well, I thought the best thing would be to find a way to help her "get ahead" and start school a year earlier, when she was about to turn five. I mean, it's a whole YEAR, right? Aren't I doing my child a disservice by making her wait?
So, the search for a private school that didn't strictly adhere to the cutoff date began. I did some research and made some calls. We finally settled on a Montessori school in the area to take a look at.
We went and checked the place and the teachers out and even brought Willow in for a visit. Even though she is only turning two, we thought making the switch now would be better than ripping her away from well established relationships a few years from now. As there wasn't an opening yet we went on the waiting list. Time went by and we got the start date at the beginning of August. We were very excited.
I secretly referred to the transition week as "Hell Week" since it was, quite literally, a half an hour at the new school the first day with subsequently longer time at the new school each day until she was there full time at the end of the week. This meant a lot of back-and-forth to work for me since my husband is out of town 4 days a week. They assured me that "35 years of Montessori experience" has proven that this was the best way. I can tell you, knowing my child, that this wasn't a good thing. Willow likes you to "rip the band aid off" and would have done much better had we gone cold turkey. But, that's neither here nor there.
We transitioned. And we started week two, which was the first "full" week without a hitch. The biggest challenge for us was her eating. She doesn't eat much. She ate fine at daycare since they served the food and everyone ate the same thing. But at her new school, she wasn't eating. I knew she'd eventually get over it and it was getting better by the end of the week.
I won't go into details, but the school did a few things during this first week that made me second-guess moving her there. So, after much discussion between us parents, we moved her back to the daycare she has been at since she was 6 months old. Willow was happy at the new school and she is happy back at her daycare.
Before we made the decision to move Willow back to her daycare, we talked about the reasons we wanted to move her away to begin with. The main concern (my concern) was when she would have to start school. I looked at her starting school as she was about to turn six as a disadvantage. But the more I research and think about it, the more I can see it as an advantage, all around.
Willow will get one more year before she is succumbed to the "pressures" of school. I WISH I was kidding, but gone are the days when Kindergarten consisted mainly of playing and getting used to the more structured routine of elementary school. These days, kids are taught how to read and write and do math. And it's funny because, as I was thinking about writing this article, I noticed a new story on MSNBC entitled Tutoring tots? Some kids prep for kindergarten.
These days, children are learning in Kindergarten what used to be taught in the first grade, despite any evidence that learning things like math and reading earlier results in any benefit when the child is older. This spring, a group called the Alliance for Childhood, whose executive director is a former Preschool and Kindergarten teacher, released a study called Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. The study concludes that kindergartens have changed dramatically in the last two decades “from places where love of learning was thoughtfully nurtured into pressure-cooker classrooms where teachers are required to follow scripts, labor under unrealistic one-size-fits-all standards, and test children relentlessly on their performance. Kindergarten has ceased to be a garden of delight and has become a place of stress and distress.”
And, unfortunately, the pressures that parents and teachers are putting on our very young children can lead to big problems. According to the article I sited above, Carleton Kendrick, a Boston-area family therapist for more than 30 years, says he sees first-hand the consequences of “fast-tracking” children.
Too much pressure to perform academically from teachers and parents can lead to a range of anxiety-related complaints and psychosomatic symptoms in youngsters that normally wouldn’t show up until the teen years or later, he says. School stress can cause young children to be worried, overwhelmed, ashamed, guilty and even clinically depressed. For some, the stress can contribute to headaches, stomach upset, stuttering and insomnia.
YIKES!
I can safely say that we are quite happy with our decision to not interfere with the natural course of things with respect to school. It's taken me a little while to get used to the idea but I think I am finally there. My #1 goal for my daughter is for her to be happy. And while an extra year when she is so young may SEEM like a lot, I think we'll all be better for it in the end.
