Kindergarten Can Wait

A couple of weeks ago, I paid the registration fee to save Keira a spot at her preschool for next year...meaning that Kindergarten Fret-iness 2011 has ended, and we've decided that she's not quite ready to start kindergarten this fall. It feels good to have it settled!

Basically, it boiled down to this: when we set aside our own egos (because, let's face it, "Your kid isn't ready for kindergarten" kind of feels like an insult) and the money aspect (the cheapskate in me is always going to feel like not spending $230 a month is better than spending it!), there really is no downside to waiting a year and giving Kiwi a chance to--hopefully--outgrow her tendency to cry at the drop of a hat. (She absolutely flipped her sh*t the other day when Bear made her a sandwich and she caught him putting peanut butter on the brown side of an "end slice" of bread, in an attempt to pass it off as a regular piece. If we could even dial the drama down a notch or two in the year to come, her future teachers will thank us!) Starting her this fall, on the other hand, could've backfired in a year, or five years, or ten years, and there'd be no going back. Whilst surveying everyone in the known universe for opinions on the matter, we ran across several people who regretted starting their children on the early side, but have yet to find a person who regrets waiting. Pretty compelling anecdotal evidence, say the Bears!

The clincher was that her preschool has a pre-K type of class full of other kids exactly like her (well, maybe minus the bread drama...but academically bright yet on the immature side, anyway) and right around her age, so she'll be getting a totally different curriculum than she's getting this year and won't be bored learning "A is for apple" over and over again for another year.

It feels a little silly that the whole reason I even looked into changing schools next year was because I didn't want us to be driving her 30 miles each way to and from kindergarten on my days off...and now she won't be going to my school at all next year...but I guess we'll cash in that benefit next year just the same.

In the meantime, Kiwi is suddenly all aboard the reading train, and begs me to bring home leveled readers for her to practice reading at night. I can't believe how many words she's able to read without help, and she's already whizzed through all the Level 2 books I brought home a couple of days ago. If she keeps it up, she may end up toting Babysitters Club books to her first day of kindergarten (or, uh, something more intellectually stimulating than what her mother read in elementary school?) but I'd rather run the "risk" of her being a little ahead, than potentially falling behind on account of having a nervous breakdown every time her shoe comes untied.

Besides that, I'm liking the idea of having her to ourselves for another year before we become total slaves to the school calendar. Right now, the girls get plenty of time to do things like pretend, pick oranges at Grandma's house, play dress-up, and occasionally jaunt off to Disneyland or the zoo on a weekday...and, as the author of What Should a 4-Year-Old Know? and any kindergarten teacher will tell you, that freedom to explore at this age is at least as valuable as any time they could be spending at a desk!