14 December 2006

this is a little too early

Today in the mail I received a package with a letter informing me that it's time to register my child for kindergarten.

Kindergarten!

Okay, even though we're still less than halfway through the school year, the nursery school he's currently at starts holding open houses and accepting applications in January every year, so I know it's not really too early. But there's an element of competition to nursery school that doesn't exist in public kindergarten, where they have to take everyone whether they like it or not. You wouldn't think they'd need so much advance notice. But no. I've got a 12-page packet full of forms (mostly health information) to fill out before scheduling a registration appointment for early January.

The biggest problem with all of this, of course, is that our future, our summer and fall of 2007, is one big ol' question mark. We don't know when Greg will finish his PhD. We don't know where we will be living or when we'll be moving there (though we recently got a notice that we're expected to move out of student housing at the end of August next year, so we'll be moving sometime before then). Now I have to start worrying about kindergarten preparation, without knowing where James will be going to kindergarten? No fair.

Luckily, James is not interested in or excited about kindergarten at all, so he won't be disappointed by the uncertainty. I don't know why exactly, but so far he's pretty resistant to the idea of kindergarten. First he said it was because he didn't want to learn to hold a writing implement correctly, but now that he's got that down, he's coming up with other, seemingly random, excuses. Today he doesn't want to go to kindergarten because he doesn't know any math or science (incorrect -- he knows a good amount of both for his age) and he's worried about having too much homework (I'm guessing this comes from being good buddies with a 2nd grader). So I suppose he'll be relieved if I can't get things together to register him for kindergarten. Which, really, is not a serious worry. I know he'll end up going to school somewhere, and I'm fairly confident that he will love it.

But this is just another thing to add to the list, another item to cram into those summer months that are already starting to look a little crowded. I am not really looking forward to that.

4 comments:

Samay said...

you can move around a kid without fucking him up too much before about the 4th grade. Trust me, my first few moves were fine, the later ones sucked. (of course, I moved 6 times as a kid. I'm also fucked up, sooo....)

Samay said...

ooh, am i not supposed to be swearing on this blog?

Anonymous said...

I think as long as you don't have to make James transfer schools in the middle of a school year, once he's already gotten comfortable and made friends, he should be fine. You don't want a kid that cries every day not wanting to go to his new school because he misses his friends at his old school. Ask Mom; I'm sure it sucked.

and rudeness said...

Wow, that is a lot to consider. It's hard to know what to do. But I know you will make the right decision! As his Mom that's all you know.

The only thing I know that may ease your soul?... I went to 11 different schools in 12 years... and I think I turned out okay. I don't think it, "moving", affected me until 5th grade.

(However, I wont say I didn't throw tantrums when I had to move before 5th grade!)