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Mom On The Edge
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mom on the edge January 2007 By Sandra Tsing Loh Count me…in? Kindergarten unreadiness and being 5 I would like to speak out on behalf of a tentative movement that may soon wobble across the nation. I call it “kindergarten unreadiness.” By that, I mean that if families want their soon-to-be 5-year-olds to go to kindergarten this fall. . . they should just send them. Does such a schooling choice seem obvious to you – a no-brainer? Be glad you do not live in a “competitive parenting” neighborhood. Apparently that’s where today’s “kindergarten red-shirting” – the practice of holding back – particularly the boys – so they start school at age 6 – is most widespread. Benefits cited range from greater emotional maturity to a future size advantage in sports to minimizing the trauma of puberty (painful enough, and supposedly worse if you are small). On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to red-shirting as a way of diverting extra stress on the family. I think fondly of a boy from my daughter’s old preschool. A kindergarten-unreadiness poster child, Ben was wiggly, wandered, and seemed oblivious to his teachers’ increasingly insistent (one might even say irate) commands. Ben was also temperamental. He’d shriek at his mother when she refused to let him wear his favorite pink-feathered headband (think “Sunset Boulevard,” a mini Gloria Swanson). The coup de gras was that Ben was a head shorter than all the other children, even with the headband. Ben’s mother felt that if Ben were unleashed on kindergarten, she’d be getting home a lot of notes from teachers. But more deeply, she confessed over a glass of wine, she got panic attacks when contemplating separation from the idyllic Beatrix Potter-like preschool Ben had been terrorizing. She’d just settled into her groove as the organic vegetable garden mom and hated to think of that all disappearing. Meanwhile, the dad (a Raiders fan) could not wait to stick his metaphorical boot to his son’s metaphorical rear to get him the heck out of the house. The result? Ben’s entrance into kindergarten was delayed one year. Why? Because IT IS HIS MOTHER WHO DOES THE DRIVING. And there you have it. I say by all means, red-shirt if it will stave off divorce. But do not red-shirt in the belief that you control the universe, and that you can personally guarantee your child will hit no speed bumps in the road of life. Puberty is tough enough without one’s parents standing by, shocked that it is going badly. “But Dylan. . . seven years ago we RED-SHIRTED you! Dr. Kleinschmidt promised us if you started kindergarten late, by junior high you would be LAUGHING!” |
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