Kindergarten: The good and the stressful

I had no idea that Kindergarten would be so stressful.  For me.

This is the good: 

The bus.  Anna loves riding the bus and Benjamin and I love taking her to the bus stop.  She will run out of the car, blow a hasty kiss over her shoulder and mount the steps up the bus without looking back.  She was like that from day 1.  Benjamin gets a thrill every time he sees the bus pull up.  He will wave to Anna through the car window and say, "Bye Anna, have a great at school!"
I like watching the other parents.  We all seem to look out for each other.  I think we have all been the parent who is just pulling up as the bus is getting ready to leave and more than once I have seen parents step in and ask the bus driver to wait because they see a kid anxiously running across the parking lot.  I also like watching the moms say goodbye to their kids.  I watched one mom do this thing where she kissed the palm of her son and then he kissed her palm before he loaded onto the bus.  It is from a book called "the kissing hand."  Maybe I had no right to observe such an intimate moment, but it taught me that I do not have the corner market on loving and caring for my kids-- that there are numberless parents out there whose lives revolve happily around these little people.   I was touched.

The teacher: Anna has a FANTASTIC teacher.  She is really good at working with each child individually and great at communicating with them and us. The first week, her teacher approached me and said that Anna was having a hard time focusing and responding correctly to instructions.  That night we practiced the game Simon Says, and the next day the teacher told me that Anna had really improved in her focus and attention to instructions.  The next day she sent an email to us applauding Anna's progress and telling us to keep up what we were doing.  Anna's teacher really requires a lot of her students and she actually gives them about 25 more minutes of instruction than is required because she follows through with a specific routine each day and if the classroom time is over, but the routine is not done, she keeps the students until all the work is through.  Each week we get a newsletter and specific instructions from the teacher on how to help our children that week.  As a result, Anna is thriving!  She has found numerous new friends and I have had no reports of any mean behavior at all.  Anna has not come home crying and has even been invited to some play dates.    She loves school, loves her teacher, and has gotten really good at doing her homework.   She is already correcting my crude and rudimentary Spanish.

The stressful:

School pick up time.  There is only one half day Kindergarten class, so pick up time consists of about 22 parents milling around the school patio waiting for our kids to emerge  out of their classroom.  Some of these parents have known each other for a long time.  Some have been going to this school for a long time.  Some of the parents are the kind of parents who get there really early and do lots of talking with the other moms while they wait for school to get out.  In the beginning I really tried to make an effort to socialize.  One mom went around collecting all the other parent's contact information and forming playdate schedules and such.  I figured I should try to make friends and make a good impression.  Its what you do...apparently.   Unfortunately, the moment I would start talking to one person or another, Benjamin would find the kid who was the least stable on his feet and push him over.  Or he would start throwing rocks, or do something else equally destructive.  Inevitably, I would be dragged out of a conversation because my child was terrorizing another child.  After a few weeks of that, I saw moms start defensively protecting their child if they saw Benjamin coming within a certain radius of their position. Well, it was just too embarrassing apologizing all the time and trying to explain that Benjamin was really very sweet, just strong beyond his knowledge.  So I began to stay in the car with Benjamin until Anna came out. Now, I am the kind of mom who rushes in right when the kids are getting out, swoops in to gather up her kid, and rushes back to the car as soon as possible without talking to anyone.  But from the safety of my car I can see the other parents still gathering in their small groups, chatting and letting their little kids play together while they wait.  It stresses me out to think I might be failing some social expectation.  BUT I JUST WANT TO PICK UP MY KID!

Volunteering:  Its what you do if you are a good mom, right?  You go in the classroom and do busy work so the teacher doesn't have to.  You volunteer to be on committees and organizations or to chair certain events so that you can say that you have school pride and that you participate.  Well, I got in a little over my head.  In the first few weeks I had volunteered at Anna's walk-a-thon,  volunteered to head up the "Readers are Doers" program in Anna's class, and also found myself part of a three woman committee in charge of Reflections for the school.  What can I say, I was naive and new to this school thing and very enthusiastic.  In the future I will be very wary of volunteering opportunities.  I feel like I am just surviving from day to day and I know that much of the busy in my life is self imposed and does not have to be there.  Just say NO!

Academic expectations:  Bellevue is kind of an intense school district.  There are a lot tiger families here who have rigorous expectations for their kids. A few weeks into Anna's school, they apparently did some testing to see which kids might qualify for the gifted and talented programs in the school district.  But they didn't tell us that they had done testing.  We only found out about it when they mailed to us a sheet of paper with a short explanation of the outcome of the testing.  To paraphrase in my own words, it said: 

"We conducted some testing to see if your child qualifies for entry into the gifted and talented program.  Please look below to see what further actions may be needed
a.) no further action is necessary, your child is not gifted
b.) your child may be gifted.  We are not sure, so we would like your child to take further tests.
c.) your child is definitely gifted!  Please contact us further about entry into this very special program."

I may have put my own little spin on things...

In any case, Anna's was marked the first option "no further action is necessary."

I am still not sure why we needed to get that letter.  WE didn't know about the test, no action was needed from us, so why give us a letter to tell us that our child is ordinary (at least by their standard at that time).  It reminded me of law school when they would send me a letter to tell me I was in the bottom 50th percentile (just barely, but still...) after grades came out. 

The part I didn't like was that I felt like we had somehow failed because at this point Anna was considered average or at grade level.   Ugghhh!  Its not like Richard or I were in any gifted/talented program and we turned out pretty good.  I want to just let Anna be great, her way.  And I want her to enjoy school.

So halfway through our first year in school, I think I have the most to learn!