This morning Havilah took her first innocent steps, alone, out of the comfort and nurturing sphere of the Snaars den and into the grimy and grubby, foul and feral world of public school kindergarten.
We've been preparing for this for a couple of weeks. We registered her and brought her in for an assessment. We bought supplies - crayons, markers, folders, scissors, modeling clay, nap mat, book bag. We're completely and totally prepared for this - all of us, the whole family. Evil, evil, stupid elementary school!
Tuesday afternoon we got to meet her teacher. She was organized, patient, warm, kindly. She gave us a folder of information and answered all our questions. Her name is Ms. Wiltz and she has 27 years' experience. Evil, evil Ms. Wiltz!
I have noticed so many changes in Havilah this month. She's gotten taller again. Her face has thinned some more. Her vocabulary is ever-increasing, and her thoughts become more and more complex.
This morning, for the first time ever, she allowed Michelle to gather all her hair back in a pony-tail, and she didn't pull it out. She looked just like a little five-year-old grown-up!
Simcha, too, is adjusting, and growing. These two sisters are very attached to one another. Michelle didn't want Simcha to see her Mommy crying as she left one of her two children behind. In the car, Simcha asked Michelle, "We get her later Mommy? We come back later for Havilah?" Not too long ago, she couldn't say her sister's name. She would say "Ha-lala".
I've been rebuking myself all day for not going with them. I should have just come in late to work so I could be with them.
I will still see my daughter for the same amount of time. She will be home before I get home from work every day. So, it's a bigger change for the rest of the family. Still, I can't stop thinking about Havilah in school, and Simcha and Michelle at home. This is a good change. This is a good change. This is a good change. (Sigh.)
For Love of Tender Recondity
- snaars
- Cognoscension, MY, United States
- If it can be spoken, then it is not the true snaars. Snaars should not be mistaken for his mortal alter-ego, snaars. This earthly manifestation of snaars - or snaarsissistic prophet, if you will - is a rather unambitious thirtysomething recent college graduate with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a minor in religious studies. A devoted husband, and father of three beautiful snaars daughters, Snaars blogs about his life, his times, his family, favorite song lyrics, nonsense, wisdom, atheism, metaphysics, science, rationality, and the snaars. Snaars likes to remove old words from the back of the cupboard, polish them up, and display them in fresh ways. Feel free to expand the horizons of discourse, because snaars has ever-unplumbed depths of mutifacetedness. And humility. (If only the world knew the perplexity of my condition, for Snaars could be so easily consumed by vanity!)
La lettre d'écarlate de l'athéisme, snaarsassiste
TCPS
UCS
Iraq war web sites
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
5 comments:
Yes, it is a good change. A parent's job is to equip his or her child for independence. One small step at a time, of course.
This is a significant increment along that path.
Mary P. may disagree. She homeschooled her children until grade four or five, and arguably they are nicer kids for it. But my kids are turning out very well, too, and they all went to school at the usual age.
Frankly, I think a lot of it results from genetics, which is about as random as a lottery.
Q
Thanks for the encouragement, Q.
I think homeschooling is great. Michelle was home-schooled, and when we first started having kids we agreed that home-schooling was the way to go. We bought a curriculum a year or two ago and Michelle has been homeschooling them, and I have been helping out here and there.
It was a hard choice, but we finally decided that public school was the best thing for us in our current situation.
Thanks Mary P. Yeah, I guess the word "curriculum" makes it sound like we are thoroughly organized and formally educated here in the snaars household. Actually, the curriculum is just a package of books, crafts, and educational games, and suggestions for how to use them. The idea is to let the kids have fun while learning. It's great for those of us who lack imagination when it comes to directing the activities of small children.
One reason we wanted to homeschool is that public and private schools are so very structured. This is not a fault, they are necessarily so. Yet that kind of structure is not always conducive to learning or nurturing the imagination.
Nevertheless, generally speaking the public schools do a good job.
Maybe in another two or three years, when we're a little more stable financially, we can homeschool again for a while. I just hope we have that option in Delaware. Some places, the laws have become ridiculously strict for homeschoolers. Delaware's laws don't seem too strict - they require that homeschoolers keep certain records and submit them annually to the dept. of education there. But laws can be changed.
I know that home-schooling can work really well for some people, but I feel that my children will get a better all rounded education by attending the local public school.
This is partly because (as I've said before) I am far too lazy to do constructive stuff with them all the time, partly because I do not have the same resources as a school, and partly because I would go loopy having them all at home all the time for the next 16 years.
Also, I don't particularly send them to school for the academic stuff - I can teach them that in many interesting ways, but for the understanding of social groups, time-management, peer-group pressure & team work and individual assessment. All of these will prove vital in their later life (probably). Plus it means they meet plenty of other local kids to play with.
Here in the UK home-schooling is monitored in the same way as other schools, so its not an easy option, although more & more people are taking it up every year.
Hi Mrs. Aginoth. Homeschooling is a hotbed of issues: socialization of children, the government's proper role in the raising of children, parental rights, and what educational environment is best, to name just a few. Both you and Mary P. have touched on a few of these.
You describe yourself as lazy, but from what you have said I'm not sure that that is necessarily true. I think all parents need time away from their kids, whether it's for work or just for much-needed "down time". Small children cannot be left alone, and in our industrial or post-industrial, paranoid society, often there's no one around but one parent to do the bulk of the child-raising. It's not unusual for someone to go "loopy" from time to time.
Parenting is a skill. Like any other skill it takes time, patience, and hard work to develop. If we didn't run out of patience now and then, we'd be superhuman (like Mary P.)!
I think home-schooling (or private tutoring), done right, is far supererior to public school. But public school can be better than homeschooling in lots of ways. It all depends on the individual situation.
Post a Comment