I Feel Like A Heel

Today was not my best day. I didn’t intend for any of it to be bad, but sometimes you just know it’s a bad day, and you don’t do anything to ensure it turns around.

This morning, I dropped Little Miss at daycare after Mister Man’s bus came (early for ONCE instead of 10-15 minutes late, which meant instead of sitting outside reading, he was still putting his shoes on). As I see every single day when I am at the daycare, there is a car parked in the handicap spot. Well, mostly in the handicap spot anyway. He was parked somewhat sideways to ensure he took up most of two spots.

The daycare the wee ones go to has two other businesses in the complex. There’s a Christmas tree business in the building behind is and something generic on the close side of the building by the drive up to the complex. The Lexus parks in the spot closest to the drive with no handicap tags or sign every single day that I go there. Granted, it’s unlikely that the handicap spot is going to be truly needed by someone, but it’s still wrong and illegal (and obviously a pet peeve of mine). It isn’t like there aren’t other spots nearby. In fact, the non-handicap spot next to where he (and I assume it’s a man) parks is usually open.

So today, I looked up who does the police for that town, and I called them and let them know about the car. The woman I spoke to seemed irritated by the car being there and promised to send a car out to take a look. I feel somewhat conflicted about doing that, but I’m still going to look to see if the car is there when I take Little Miss to daycare on Monday.

But before I did that, I had a bad mom incident – completely accidentally, I swear. Mister Man asked for a bagel for breakfast. Since they’d both slept in somewhat this morning, and I knew that the bus driver had “promised” to be early today (as opposed to picking Mister Man up at 8:51 to get to a preschool 20 minutes away that starts at 9am after picking up two additional kids…), so we had to hurry.

I put Little Miss’s waffle in the toaster and quickly cut a bagel in half and put it in, too. Then I fixed some granola and yogurt for myself – oh, who am I kidding, everyone shares with me because it’s yummy. As they cleaned up the front playroom, I set the table with their milk cups and food, then called them in.

We were having a lovely conversation, each intend on eating our food. About halfway through his bagel, Mister Man broke it in half. It was then that I saw the outside of it for the first time. And realized that it had spots of mold growing on it. The bagels were purchased only four days ago, so I was definitely surprised to see the mold. I quickly grabbed the bagel. Then I thought about it for a minute. He only had about four minutes to finish eating, and I didn’t exactly have time to make him a new breakfast. So I ummmm improvised. I tore off the pieces of mold and gave him back the bagel to eat.

And then there was tonight…. I’ve always known that Little Miss was going to be the more difficult of the two children. She’s far more headstrong, and she seems to think the world revolves around her – no idea where she got that notion!

Tonight, as we were getting ready for bed, Little Miss decided to start acting up. As she took off her socks, she started rubbing them in my face. I politely explained that this was disgusting and that it wasn’t a nice thing to do. So she did it again, at which point she got the raised-eyebrow-you’d-better-stop-it now. So she threw the sock at me. As I was explaining that throwing things isn’t really allowed, she started kicking me (like she was swimming, not standing like kicking a soccer ball). When I asked her if she wanted to go to the naughty step, she said yep and ran to it. And proceeded to play on it and have a grand old time.

She thought it was a grand game every time I picked her up and put her back on the step. Finally, I asked her if she was going to stay on the step or lose Baby Coco. And I took had to take Baby Coco. When timeout was over, I asked her if she knew why she was on the naughty step. She insisted she had no idea and started kicking me again.

When asking her if that was an appropriate thing to do, she giggled and said yes. I asked her to stop and explained that if she didn’t start behaving, she wasn’t going to have time to listen to Timothy read a Bob book. She laughed, jumped off the naughty step and proceeded to start kicking again. No Bob book tonight for her (Mister Man, however, read one of the books to Daddy).

That’s when she turned on the siren, accompanied by the waterworks. She didn’t want to go to bed. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t want to wear those pajamas. She didn’t want to get into bed.

Unfortunately, when she misbehaves, she doesn’t exactly get her way. She continued to scream and cry as the pjs went on, as I put her into bed, as she ran out of bed and back into the hallway, as I put her back into bed, as she opened the door and stepped across the threshold, as I put her back in her room…. It was over an hour before she finally stopped crying, but I knew that if I went in her room to comfort her or to check on her, that would only prolong it both tonight and in future nights. So I stuck it out.

Then the dilemma was whether I should go into her room and move her into her bed or leave her where she fell asleep. My husband and I discussed it for awhile. Finally we decided to go put her in her bed. But we were surprised, she’d put herself into her bed before falling asleep.

The worst part of it was that my mom called midway through the crying spell to check on the plan for tomorrow (her childcare day). She could hear Little Miss crying and wanted to know what was wrong. I explained that she simply didn’t want to go to bed, but it was well past her bedtime. My mom immediately went into the “Well, aren’t you going to check on her? What if she’s thirsty? What if she needs something?” mode, which of course is counterproductive. But now she’s all worried about my parenting of the wee ones. Hmm, coincidence that this is starting right after the return from Florida? I think not.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a better day all around. Of course, given that I’m headed into the office at 6:15 tomorrow, I’m not holding my breath. But I am going to bed so I’ll at the very least be well rested!

Should He Stay Or Should He Go?

Well, tonight seems like a good night to talk kindergarten, especially since I just came from the Kindergarten Roundup (just in case).

My dilemma is whether or not to try to have Mister Man attend kindergarten next year. His birthday is October 11, so he misses the cutoff. Easy decision, right?

Not so much, for a number of reasons. I want to do the right thing for him, but I won’t know what that is for several years, most likely. By then, it will be too late to change.

He currently attends preschool at our district’s Early Learning Center, which is the state mandated Pre-K program for special needs and at-risk kids. That should make the decision even easier, right? Of course not! He goes there because he had low muscle tone as an infant, which led to late talking and walking and fine motor development.

The late talking also led to social delays where he didn’t know how to interact with kids his age since he didn’t talk when they first started figuring it out, and when he finally started talking, they were beyond the initial stages. He still has an IEP for fine and gross motor (so he gets OT and PT once a week), but the rest of everything he’s graduated from.

This is all leading you to say I’m nuts, I know, but be patient with me.

He’s a bright kid. He has started reading (without us teaching him anything on purpose) and does some adding and subtracting. The kindergarten curriculum in our district teaches kids letters and sounds and sounding out words. There are about 19 words that the teachers told me they want the kids to sight read by the time they’re done with kindergarten. By my count, he already knows 13 of those, as well as some others.

When Mister Man is bored, he acts out. He gets goofy and checks out. I know that kindergarten is about more than just the academics, but he won’t make any social development when he’s constantly in trouble or bored.

He also is a follower in many ways. When he has strong role models, he brings his behavior up to them. When he has poor role models, he goes straight for the lowest common denominator. The role models he had in preschool last year were not the greatest, and his behavior deteriorated. This year, we put him in a class with better role models, and there’s a huge difference. The role models in kindergarten will be much stronger than the ones at the special needs preschool.

The kids in his class this year are all eligible for kindergarten next year based on their birthdays. Mister Man is the only one who doesn’t turn five before September 1, and he interacts fine with those kids and is making huge progress – especially in the last two months, socially in particular. His teacher talks about getting ready for kindergarten next year to the class, so we know they’re teaching him (and the other kids) the skills they need.

If he went to kindergarten next year, he’d be the youngest kid. I have mixed feelings on that one. First, he isn’t athletic, so that’s not a reason to hold him back (not that I’m of the mind that this is a valid reason anyway). Second, I was the youngest kid in my class (November 24 was my birthday – I made the cutoff by 6 days where I started school but then moved where September 1 was the cutoff), and I was fine with it. The fact that I saw other kids mess up with their privileges before I got them meant that I was more responsible when it came to those privileges. And I was never the first one to get something, so I didn’t have the peer pressure to do the wild and crazy things that no one else could do yet. But I know it isn’t always the same for boys as for girls, and every kid is different. Some kids don’t like being the youngest, and that makes things harder for them.

He’s also been in preschool for two full years already. If he doesn’t go to kindergarten for another year, that’s three full years of preschool. When I visited the kindergarten rooms, one of the teachers told me that until this year she would never have worried about it, but she has two students who did three years of preschool and then came to kindergarten this year and they were “overschooled” and bored. Nothing was new for them; they weren’t excited about anything, and academically, they’re already tuning out. That is definitely not what I want for my child.

And, if he does a third year at preschool, what will he learn or do there? Since he’s with all the kids going to kindergarten this year, he’s already gone through the curriculum. It would all be a repeat for him, which brings me again to the boredom and acting out issues.

One of my friends had a child in a similar situation. This year, he’s in kindergarten, and he’s bright and knows all the material already. He hates school. He never wants to go because he’s so bored. She’s told me that if she had known putting him in kindergarten early was an option, she would have gone for it in a heartbeat and now has huge regrets. Next year, she’s looking at a gifted school 45 minutes away (with no traffic) that she’d have to drive him to and from every day. I don’t want my kid to hate school. And I’ve heard many stories about kids who have been held back who get bored with school and start to check out academically, particularly starting in the sixth grade, because it’s too easy and they just don’t care anymore. Definitely not something I want to go through.

And a much smaller reason, but a reason nonetheless is Little Miss. Her birthday is August 1, so she’ll be only one year behind him in school. I remember some of the families where the kids were one year apart in school from when I was in elementary school. Invariably, the younger sibling was a troublemaker. I don’t know if it was that they were too close together in school, whether there were too many comparisons from teachers and parents, or whether it was pure coincidence. Little Miss is already a firecracker, and she doesn’t need any encouragement. Plus, I remember both siblings always feeling a little “weird” about having a sibling just one grade above/below.

When I visited the kindergarten, I asked the teachers what they looked for in kids coming into kindergarten from a social and emotional level. They want the kids to be able to separate from their parents; no screaming and crying kids at the doorway. They want kids to sort of know how to share a little. They want kids to be able to start following some classroom directions and rules. And that’s it. Mister Man does all of this now. I was expecting the bar to be so much higher, but it isn’t.

The more I talk to the school, see the curriculum, see what the students in kindergarten now are actually doing, talk to moms who’ve been there, and so forth, the more I lean towards sending him to kindergarten next year. The real sort of kicker is watching him blossom socially. As I posted a few days ago, he’s finally getting it. He plays with kids every day and truly has friends. With that component missing, I’d be more in doubt, but something’s clicked lately.

But it isn’t all up to me. His team at preschool has to recommend him for kindergarten. Then he has to be tested at one of the schools in district. Then they have to get my and others’ opinions. A lot of it is out of my hands, but the more I learn, the more comfortable I am moving forward and starting to push to have him go to kindergarten next year.

A friend of mine went with me to the roundup tonight. Her son turns six on September 2. She didn’t put him into kindergarten this year, as she also didn’t realize it was an option. He reads. He does math. He likes learning and does first and second grade workbooks for fun. And he hates going to his daycare/preschool because he’s bored there and isn’t learning enough. After going to the roundup, she’s seriously considering trying to move him to first grade next year for the same concerns I have. At least I’m not alone… but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Thoughts?