Tomorrow my Rainbow starts Senior Kindergarten. Last year at this time I was having second and third thoughts about putting my daughter into Junior Kindergarten. In hindsight I wish I had stuck to my guns and kept her home. I still feel that full day Junior Kindergarten is too much for three and four year olds to handle.
At four years old my daughter desperately needed an afternoon nap. Some days she would literally pass out on the floor while playing after school. On others she would fall asleep on the bus ride home. Often I would have to wake her to get her off the bus, and some days she was so out of it she refused to walk home. Wanting instead to nap on the front lawn where the bus dropped her off. The eight minute walk home on those days was pure hell.
She also continued to eat at a snail’s pace, and to make matters worse she would often waste part of her lunch period using the washroom. Most days she would bring home 98% of the food I sent with her. She would come home frazzled, tired, grumpy and hungry.
But she loved it. She absolutely loved going to school. So I kept sending her, because I didn’t want to crush her by removing her from the program. But in my heart I fiercely wished I had never enrolled her in the first place and when the school year finally ended I breathed a sigh of relief. Done. All of these other mothers were posting things online about going crazy because the kids were home for the summer, or wondering what the heck to do with them, and I just felt happy and relieved.
However now, the summer is all too quickly over, and it’s time to send my girl back to school. My daughter turned five over the summer. She also shot up like a weed, and stopped needing naps (she now naps maybe once or twice a week, and the rest of the time has a “quiet time, reading or drawing while little sister sleeps). I don’t know quite how to express it, she is just such a remarkably different, bigger, older, more mature kid then she was a year ago.
My girl is well-spoken, independent and eager to learn. She can’t wait to go back. And this year, she is so very ready for it. I know I will hate the fuss of getting her out to school, and I’ll miss not having her here on those days… but this year I have no reservations. This is a kid who is prepared for the adventures and experiences that school will bring. My only regret is that last year I didn’t follow my gut instinct and hold her back until she was ready.
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