neuroticgirl's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the kindergarten blues I had a meeting with Caleb's teacher today. Apparently he is not doing good in school and she chose just right now to tell me the full extent of his not doing well-ness. He will probably be retained in kindergarten. This is blowing my mind. I know he was having problems and we've been working on them a lot. He seems to do really well at home. Apparently once he gets to school it all goes out his ear and he plays and kinda acts like he doesn't know how to do the work. But he does you see. His teacher told me that this is common in children who never went to daycare and children that are very young when they enter kindergarten. She said it was a developmental thing. Caleb was only 4 when he went to kindergarten and he is the youngest child in his class. I, of course, thought this developmental BS was a bunch of hooey and greeted all of this news with a very skeptical look and maybe a bit of that -how stupid do you think I am- look. So I went straight to my psychology professor and asked her about it since she used to be a developmental psychologist and she has worked with children extensively. And guess what. There is definite proof that children who enter school too early are more likely to fail kindergarten for developmental reasons. So maybe I'm not a failure as a mother huh? I feel so incredibly inadequate. When I left the school all I could think about was how, thanks to me not doing enough, my child would have to stay back in kindergarten. Sometimes at night when me and billy were talking and the kids were in bed I'd tell billy how it seems like they expect so much more out of kindergartners than they did when I was 5. I used to play in the sand and try not to pee my pants. Those were my goals. He has homework every night, a book report every week, he has to know how to read these certain books (which are fairly easy, I'll give them that, but they aren't THAT easy), he has to know how to add single digit numbers, know how to tell time, and count money. These are not things that I thought he'd have to know. It was different with Ian, he knew how to read basic little words when he was 3, he now reads the newspaper, he loves doing work. Math isn't his favorite but he's good at it and he doesn't have any problems at school. He breezes right through it. I feel like there is such a negative stigma attached to failing kindergarten and I hope he isn't made fun of for this. Ian is very shy and bookish and Caleb is very outgoing, tons of "girlfriends", always getting invited to sleepovers and birthday parties. He is only 5 now so I can't imagine how him failing could be due to anything that he did, it just has to be me. So if he gets made fun of it will be because of me. I didn't prepare him enough, I didn't help him enough, I didn't promote education as being important enough. I don't know. But somehow by the time I got home I was crying pretty hard and wondering why the hell I think it's such a great idea to have a baby now when I can't even nurture the children I have correctly. I'm trying to see this as a developmental issue but come on. There had to be something I could have done to push him along. Why didn't I know that things were so bad? It's hard to think reasonably about this. 3:52 p.m. - 5.17.01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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