Emotional education
I don’t do back-to school shopping any more—but I still sense the educational expectations and emotions that arise every September. Even without all the fuss over Obama’s speech, the start of a school year summons up strong feelings. The first day photo op. Proud parents, sweet smiles, sharp pencils.
For most parents, the feelings are positive:—Pride. Hope. Freedom. Sometimes the feelings are not as positive: If you just sent your kid off to school or college for the first time and you’re worried. If your kid has a teacher you don’t like– or is in a school you don’t like– or is put into the wrong reading group.
I feel your pain. I wish I could spare you the emotional wear and tear and just say it will all work out in the end—because probably it will.
I also wish I could go back and spare my former self some of the drama.
It started from the moment my first child was born when my dad started discussing where she’d someday go to college. I didn’t buy into this ridiculousness. (But I was thinking Yale.)
My daughter's education began at 6 weeks. ( I would have started sooner but I had a very rough delivery). We joined a mommy and me class nearby—to check out the school’s potential as a learning institution. That was the first of many schools Alli attended— we’re talking double digits. And that was before kindergarten—when the real nightmare started (a.k.a. private school applications).
At the time we lived in Los Angeles. Problem one is that we weren’t in a position to donate a building. Problem two is that there were way too many kids and way too many schools and way too many choices for someone like me—-who felt I had to do it absolutely right. I was so intense and so invested in this process, I felt as if my entire life—and hers—-depended on her getting into the “right” school.
Only she didn’t. She didn’t get into a single school we applied to. I could feel the gate to Yale slam shut.
I won’t even get into how a parent feels when your kid is rejected from anything, much less at such a tender age. Alli was 5, happily oblivious that her future success was swirling down the drain. The grownup was the one who cried.
At the one school I desperately wanted her to attend, Alli was on the waiting list—along with several other kids we knew. This was a tiny school—with space for 11 girls in kindergarten. Several siblings were automatically admitted, so god knows how many desperate parents wanted those remaining few spaces. I hate to make light of something serious—but it was a little like waiting for someone to get hurt so you could get their donated organs.
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