First grade ho!

With quite a bit of trepdiation, we’re sending E to first grade next week. Surprisingly, making the decision didn’t take very much time at all. It’s so clearly the right thing to do. I’ll agonize endlessly over the whole thing until we know for sure that it will “take” and then I’ll probably keep agonizing over it anyway. (And in 20 years, E will be telling me that I ruined his life by not letting him go to kindergarten with all his friends. He is, after all, a middle child).

We took E in for evaluation this morning and the school administrator went through part of the testing with him before deciding that she didn’t need to finish it and that the best decision is to put him into first grade.

I worry about the socialization and his friends. He’s been in the same class with some of these kids for the past 3 years, and that’s a long time in his life. But the kindergarten is being split anyway and the classes are right across from first grade, and he already knows one of his teachers really well. We just have to hope that he is able to cope with first grade socially, and that his friends who are in kindergarten will still want to play with him.

I worry about what the other moms will say. I’ve known a lot of them for 3 years now, and I hate the idea of being perceived as the “pushy, obnoxious mom.” It’s hard to balance being an advocate for your child with the possibility of pushing too hard. I think we’ve been too accommodating in the past, and we’ve definitely found that the you have to stand up for yourself or your children to get them what they need.

I worry about what will happen when it’s time for second grade or third grade. “Skipping” a grade is only a stopgap measure for a kid like E. In a couple of years we’ll be facing what to do next. I won’t skip him again. He’ll already be a year to a year and a half younger than most of the kids in his class. This school does have a history of providing academic enrichment, and that gets easier to accomplish for them the older the kids get, so maybe by the time we get there, we’ll be able to tackle it that way. I don’t know.

And when I worry so much, I’ll just have to repeat my mantra. “These children demand so much of us as parents, but the rewards of being with them are equally great.” I guess that mantra is probably true for any parent, but sometimes the challenges are so enormous that I have to remind myself constantly that the rewards are enormous too.