School

(I am so behind on so many other posts I have want to write, but I have this on my mind right now.)

So you think I would be prepared for my kids to be in school, being a teacher and all, but I'm not so sure. The kids are in a pre-K program this year and it has been wonderful. They are in a school right by our house and is our neighborhood they will (probably) go to for kindergarten. Anyway, we have seen nothing but happiness when the kids come home. Well, happiness and tiredness of course. It has been a good place for them to be. This week has been a week of all of us getting back into the swing of things, from getting up early, remembering every one's things and playing with friends. That last part-playing with friends-seems to be the hardest thing for A.

Two days this week A has come home talking about 2 of her friends from school. "They won't play with me. They tell me I can't play with them. I'm not pretty enough to play with them. I don't have blonde enough hair to be in their BFF club. You know, like Best Friends Forever?" WHAT?!? She's 4. I'm not ready for this to start. All along I've always said that J is going to be more prepared for all of this than I am. I guess with teaching the grade level I teach I know what can happen at such a young age. But I wasn't ready for it to start now, at age 4. It breaks my heart to hear her talk about these things already. I can't believe she is already talking about how she doesn't like her red hair and how she doesn't think it is shiny enough or blonde enough. Isn't that something she's supposed to worry about when she's 14 instead of 4? Being the worrying mom I am, I had to talk to her teacher to see what was really going on, since this wasn't the first time she had talked about the girls. Come to find out it is as we expected...all of the girls take their turn with the whole-You can't play with me-thing. That's what J and I thought the more and more we talked about it, but you never know. Hopefully things won't continue like this with her for forever-I'm going with...It's a phase. That usually works being a parent. Everything is a phase. But this phase is one of those that we really need to focus in on and teach. There are going to be more and more of those times where we really have to do some teaching.

On a completely different note in school we have C. In talking with their teacher about how much we love where they are this year, she shared a bit about him. She talked about how serious he is with his work. When they go back to do their seat work he is very focused and concentrates so hard on what he is doing. We see this a lot with his coloring at home. He takes a long time in coloring one page whereas A will get through 3 pages without as much detail as C. I love hearing that about him. If you know C at all, you know that he is a boy-boy; a boy full of energy and life who can be rambunctious at times. He runs everywhere when given the chance and jumps around a lot (an understatement!). So it is really nice to hear that he is doing well with his work at school. Kara (one of his teachers) said she's seen a huge change in him from the beginning of the year.

School. Ready or not, here it comes. I definitely take off my "teacher hat" when I think of my own kids. I have my "mommy hat" with them, as it should be. It will be interesting to see how things progress as they really start school next year with kindergarten. I guess we keep doing what we're doing...staying interested in what they're learning, how they're learning, who their friends are and how they are doing as kids. Things will happen and we'll do our best to help when we can.