Timing

Gillian was born mid-September. In Ilinois, the cut off for school is September 1st. That is why she didn't go to preschool until she was almost 4 (preschool starts at age 3); the child has to be that age by the 1st of September. So, when she is eligible for kindergarten, she will be nearly 6 years old. This worries me in a socially focused preschool where my kid loves academics.

{{I will preface the following paragraph with the acknowledgement that my child is no prodigy or genius of any kind, and that most of the kids in the circles we run in have an equal level of motivation in learning The Basics; this is purely about how we struggle with her starting school a full year late, how we struggle to back off and pipe down and let teachers get on with educating our children, and relinquishing control of who will shape the way she approaches school learning...}}

I have tried not to push academics with Gillian too much, but she got the LeapFrog letter and word factory movies when she was 2 as gifts, loved them, and absorbed them like a sponge. She wanted to write letters and learn the sounds of the letters, so she learned them. Now, I assume by osmosis (because last summer when I saw her writing numbers they were all kind of weird), she is writing her numbers perfectly up to 20-this I saw for the first time last weekend (I never saw her practice, so that was unexpected). She learned to count to 100 by listening to me count while I tickle her back before bed (this was only so she would know what the end was so I didn't get stuck doing it for days, but she was listening a lot harder than we thought!). So, she is handy with drawing and with writing, probably because she likes getting positive feedback about her drawings and writing (and she is an extroverted attention glutton, so she likes to do things to impress people, especially Mama and Papa).

The reason I am telling you this is because I have real concerns about how she is going to behave with another 16 months between her and kindergarten where she will learn to write her letters, spell her name, and count (all of which she knew before starting preschool last summer). I would love to hear your stories if you have older children who were in this position at Gillian's age-what wisdom can you impart with educational prep? Gillian is no cakewalk on a regular day, and is exceedingly difficult when bored. So, if she already knows the basics of kindergarten, I hope the curriculum can meet her needs.

This came up because I had a parent-teacher conference last week. THAT is weird. (that I'm a parent and have parent-teacher conferences). Anyway, I asked them what they do to keep children engaged. I assume these days, like Gillian, more and more kids are coming to preschool knowing colors, shapes, letters, numbers, how to spell some words, like their names and those of their family members (technology, preschool-TV, family structure, mutually exclusive gender roles in parenting becoming less important while spending more quality time with kids becomes more important, etc., certainly has a hand in why this is so)....so how does a teacher keep the kids learning? How do they keep the kids from being annoying, distracting pains in the butt when they are trying to teach kids whose ages range from just-turned-3 to almost 6 in one preschool classroom? Right now, Gillian is learning really important things like days of the week and months of the year (and being a "little Mama" to the littlest kids in her class). Her teacher said they pace the kids with what they teach them their first and second year of preschool. She said that they have to be careful not to push too much, because preschool is really more about learning to share, to be responsible, to play well, to make friends, etc. She and the other assistant teacher said they do try to work with individual kids on things to challenge them. All I could think was "these women are ROCKSTARS!". Teachers are seriously underworshipped in this country. They mold these impressionable little brains. It's an awesome responsibility!

I believe Gillian is socially immature and needs to be in preschool. She has grown unbelieveably in the past 10 months of being at NCA (first for camp, then for preschool). She use to be so shy that she would refuse to approach other children at the playground (only wanted to play with adults-mostly ME), and now she makes friends everywhere-even when we're sitting at McDonald's. I will definitely avoid making Gillian some science experiment where learning becomes stressful-my dad made me his experiment while in school for education, and I spent my entire academic life desperate to please him. I also have a very warped need of striving for academic perfection, which makes school stressful at times. I don't want Gillian to be a slacker, but I also don't want her to be a 9th grader feeling the pressure of college (like a work colleague's daughter who is at a college prep high school in the city that seems likely to give herself ulcers over maintaining her 4.0).

When we filled out our school paperwork for 2011-2012, we considered trying to see if Gillian could start kindergarten a year early quite a bit, but everyone (particularly Nonni, the elementary school teacher who retired after 30 years in the classroom) told us we would be sorry in the long run if we put her in the position of being the youngest kid in the classroom. So, we will see how she does in this classroom another year.