end of childhood?
Well, that title may be a bit over the top, but it reflects how I'm feeling today after taking E to his school's kindergarten "pre-screening." It was a requirement to bring in your child this morning for a rather poorly hidden purpose. The gist of it is that they want to identify the kids who will struggle in school so they can put them in the all-day kindergarten program. Good chance they also want to balance the morning and afternoon classes. And, since there is only one K teacher and the school must be full to capacity to stay open,* (plus there's a student-teacher ratio they must maintain) I can understand why they would need to figure out how many kids will be filling the spots before school starts. However, I found myself in a loathsome state: feeling judged as a parent. What was supposed to happen: Ethan goes into the classroom with his teacher, sits with her for a few minutes and does some activities that I wouldn't have known about while I fill out some paperwork. What did happen: E threw (what is for him) a massive fit. He was feeling shy, which is a frequent occurrence these days, so the notion of going into a room alone with a stranger while K and I stay out was a bit too much for him. Unfortunately his response was to start violently hitting me, and he did not calm down at all when I talked him through what I thought he was feeling. Usually that works. The staff kindly said I could go with. E took a while to calm down, and he still never really talked to them. The screening consisted of having him draw a picture, write his name on it if he could, then the teacher sat and timed how many letters he could successfully identify in a minute. E knows all the letters, upper and lower, draws elaborately detailed pictures, and writes his name well. He most definitely does not respond to pressure. First off, he wrote his name backwards. Completely normal and common, many of his preschool friends write everything backwards, or even in mirror style. I've never seen E do this until today. Coincidence? When the teacher asked him if he likes to race and said they were going to have a little race with letters, I could tell it was not going to go well. His teacher, who did seem really cool, told him he could just say "I don't know" if he wanted. Well, that gave him the perfect out to proove his defiance to pressure. He said "I don't know" for at least half the letters. I have no doubt that his uncharacteristic behavior was largely due to my presence.
Yikes. This is kindergarten, right? I know there's now a reading benchmark in kindergarten, but really, how healthy is it for kids to be expected to know letters and perform under pressure before even starting school? What happened to unstructured play and real childhood? I know lots of kids who started reading very early, and I know many more who did not. Okay, all this aside, here was my biggest problem with today: I felt like E's uncharacteristic 'performance' was likely to be interpreted as a reflection of my substandard parenting skills/intelligence. How pathetic is that? That feeling was oft discussed at our preschool in Palo Alto, and we all fought and loathed it. I felt like telling his teacher that he knows all his letters, that just yesterday he correctly read 5 words on his own, that he spends hours pouring over books, and that at his preschool everyone thought he was a model little boy with impeccable behavior. Happily, I held my tongue. If she knows anything about kids, she knows that what he demonstrated for her today was probably not characteristic because K and I were there. He still made a detailed drawing, wrote his name, and identified plenty of letters. I doubt he'll be considered a delinquent, but that's exactly what this kind of thing leaves me feeling. I figured I'd feel this pressure-to-perform stuff if we stayed in the Bay area, but I didn't think I'd feel it here.
Yuck.
PS: over dinner tonight E informed me that he wants to go on a trip to China with me and stay for two days. I think this has to do with our recent discussions of earth's rotation and orbit, and the fact that when it's day here it's night in China.
*the school E will attend is our neighborhood public school, but it happens to be a magnet school for the arts and humanities. For them to stay open, the district requires that they fill every class, so they also accept students from other neighborhoods, as space permits. According to our neighbor, there is a significant wait list this year.
Yikes. This is kindergarten, right? I know there's now a reading benchmark in kindergarten, but really, how healthy is it for kids to be expected to know letters and perform under pressure before even starting school? What happened to unstructured play and real childhood? I know lots of kids who started reading very early, and I know many more who did not. Okay, all this aside, here was my biggest problem with today: I felt like E's uncharacteristic 'performance' was likely to be interpreted as a reflection of my substandard parenting skills/intelligence. How pathetic is that? That feeling was oft discussed at our preschool in Palo Alto, and we all fought and loathed it. I felt like telling his teacher that he knows all his letters, that just yesterday he correctly read 5 words on his own, that he spends hours pouring over books, and that at his preschool everyone thought he was a model little boy with impeccable behavior. Happily, I held my tongue. If she knows anything about kids, she knows that what he demonstrated for her today was probably not characteristic because K and I were there. He still made a detailed drawing, wrote his name, and identified plenty of letters. I doubt he'll be considered a delinquent, but that's exactly what this kind of thing leaves me feeling. I figured I'd feel this pressure-to-perform stuff if we stayed in the Bay area, but I didn't think I'd feel it here.
Yuck.
PS: over dinner tonight E informed me that he wants to go on a trip to China with me and stay for two days. I think this has to do with our recent discussions of earth's rotation and orbit, and the fact that when it's day here it's night in China.
*the school E will attend is our neighborhood public school, but it happens to be a magnet school for the arts and humanities. For them to stay open, the district requires that they fill every class, so they also accept students from other neighborhoods, as space permits. According to our neighbor, there is a significant wait list this year.