kindergarten

i have been a bit of a cliche mess this last week with kindergarten starting for bryson. i have so many conflicting emotions and thoughts on this subject and just needed to jot them all down...a part of my process...if you will...

its not surprising to you, if you know me, that i dont believe in public schooling. its all very political and boring and i dont want to write an essay about that, but the idea of public schooling as an idea - i am opposed to and i think what is happening now in California schools is such a result of that. so here i am about to put my own child in a public school and i feel super hypocritical about it in many ways. my husband and i talked about our alternative options and the two main ones being private school and homeschooling. one we can't afford with money and the second with time.

also - with homeschooling - i love it...bryan was homeschooled for a period and we have an amazing support system with our church and i know a grip of moms who do it and do it amazingly and were i the type of mom who could juggle teaching and working and somehow getting two kids three and five years younger than my kindergartener out of the way...i would totally do it. i still haven't ruled out the idea and it is definitely something i think we will revisit at some point, but for now it would be too much.

so anyway...here we are. and the saving grace in all of this is that bryson's school is just about the best thing you could ask for in a public elementary school. i have been blown away by the office staff, teachers and principal (who goes to our church as well).

one of the reasons this is hard for me is that the weeks leading up to kindergarten were so wonderful. we had hit our stride as a family and bryson has been doing really well and was calming down and just super fun and amazing. the other boys have been really easy too and it was just these couple weeks of an amazing end to a summer. so part of me sending him off was feeling like its all the end. its the end of the summer, but also the end of playdates and our own schedule. for the past 6 years i have taken my boys and had to answer to no one (last year bryson was in pre-school, but only 3 days a week) - and now - if i drop him off late to school he gets a tardy slip...totally forgot about those!

so it all kinda hit me dropping him off - sending him off to class - that this is the rest of his childhood. here. at this school (if we choose not to homeschool) and it was all very hard hitting. i have realized too that our normal routine of leaving the house after breakfast and running around like crazy to get bryson's energy out is disrupted, so that means he is out of control in the afternoon. i need to buy a treadmill for him or figure something out where he can get out his energy in a positive way....because right now - its not so positive.

so i guess my thoughts are a lot more jumbled than i realized...i have this guilt about putting him in a system i dont believe in whole-heartedly...i have this guilt that he is sitting down for 3 hours instead of doing what a little boy should do in my mind and run like mad and learn as he goes....i have this sadness that my little playmate is gone...i have this conviction that now his character will be put to test and all the "work" bryan and i have done to strengthen that character will also be put to test...and above all i have this hope that he will thrive in this environment because bryson tends to surprise me pleasantly in situations where i question his resolve.

and through it all i realize that these feelings are indeed not one of a kind...that moms all over the world have gone through and felt a lot of these same feelings and i look over as i am dropping him off and see a mom trying to hold back tears and it comforts me a bit. i see another mom's look of horror when they tell us that they don't check on who is picking our kid up from school. i see a child's nervous smile as mom is taking his picture on the first day and i realize how very normal it all is...whatever that means.