Preschool to Kindergarten

This is our last year in preschool. We have loved it and have had close to 4 wonderful years at this school – two with our eldest daughter, and now we are finishing up the 2nd year with our youngest. I was struggling with the thought of my baby going off to kindergarten next year – I always joke with her that I want to shrink her down and carry her around in my pocket. She loves that and tells me, “Shrink me, shrink me!”

Back in January, we received an assessment from her preschool teacher. We were quite taken aback at the results of that assessment and the ensuing conversations with her teacher. Our girlie, who is (to us) completely wonderful, bright, and witty received less than favorable scores and her preschool teacher recommends that we hold her back for another year instead of sending her to kindergarten. This was a total shock to us. Her older sister has never had problems in school and brings home fantastic report cards and test scores. She attended the same preschool and had the same teacher, but this was six years ago, before the school began doing assessments – it would be interesting to be able to compare their preschool assessments to see what the differences are. Obviously, they are two different people with different personalities, but some of the things that my girl scored poorly on left me scratching my head in confusion. My husband and I felt like, “What is the matter with us? We would never have thought that we needed to teach her that!” Specifically, one of those issues was “alternating feet when walking up and down the stairs.” It’s a developmental thing, and apparently something that they look for to see if kids are developing properly – we never would have ever thought anything of that if it had not shown up on this assessment. I am sure that this was not something that we taught our eldest daughter – it would have been interesting to see if she would not have met standards in this area too.

We have been working on these things (and more) with our girl and we thought we had seen a lot of improvement. The preschool teacher had originally said that she would do a second assessment, but later told us that she had seen "no marked improvement" and wouldn't be doing that. That was followed by another discussion where she strongly suggested that we give our daughter "a gift" and hold her back. She said it would be the best thing we could do for her. She also said that she felt our girl had low self-esteem, often saying "I can't do it" when asked to do something at school. It was difficult to hear one thing from the teacher and feel something entirely different from our personal experience with our child. For most people that know our younger daughter, low self-esteem is not at all in the list of adjectives that they would use to describe her. She's a confident kid -- she knows what she wants, she'll tell you, and she'll also call you on your own behavior/actions if she feels that it's not right. (Grandpa says she'll be a great supervisor later in life!) In fact, this was another thing to consider -- is it that she can't do the work or that she has no interest in it? She'd rather play, certainly. But is that the issue? She has (what we think is) a great vocabulary for her age. She is wonderful socially -- that was actually one area on which the preschool teacher praised her.

It was hard to separate our personal bias as parents and try to make the right decision for our girl. Would it be so bad to hold her back? No, not necessarily. But what if she really didn't need that extra year -- what if she were bored attending preschool again. How would she feel entering the 4's class as a 5-year-old? How would she feel being a grade behind her cousin who is only a month older than her?

We had discussion upon discussion (my husband and I) about what to do -- friends and family encouraged us to get another assessment, we spoke with our doctor who felt that our girl was doing just fine developmentally. When we mentioned that she was struggling a little with writing her name (which is 9 letters long -- she does the first 3 with ease), the doctor said, "Well, her name isn't LISA. It's pretty long to learn and remember!" We called and spoke to the principal of the elementary school (who knows us from our eldest daughter attending for the past 4 years) and she was encouraging by telling us that it is their job as educators to make sure that our child is successful in school. She assured us that if we or they felt that our child needed help academically, they would provide her with the tools to be successful. This all helped reassure us that kindergarten was the way to go this next year. The final deciding factor? We took our daughter to have her eyes checked. The Lions Club had come into her school and they voluntarily tested the kids' vision. They sent home a note saying, "have your child's eyes checked again." We thought perhaps she wasn't cooperating, perhaps she was distracted. Our doctor's office referred us to an eye doctor and my husband and I took her to her appointment. We mentioned the assessment to the eye doctor and mentioned that we were wondering if perhaps her eyesight could be affecting her school work. After a trying time with the doctor's assistant -- her seeming very crabby and put out that we were somehow wasting her time -- our girl was hardly answering any of her questions -- the eye doctor examined her and told us that she has a good deal of astigmatism and she needs glasses. This was quite a surprise to us, and I asked, "Does she need to wear them all the time?" The doctor said, "It will be such a difference that she'll WANT to wear them all the time. It will be like, 'Oh, hello world!'" We left his office and picked out a pair of pretty pink frames and we waited for a week for her glasses to come in. The doctor was right -- at her young age, she adapted to them immediately. She puts them on first thing in the morning, she takes them off at night and puts them on her nightstand. And they seem to have really made a difference to her in every day life and in school.

Recently, my husband was assisting at school and while he was helping out in the other room, the teacher had each child go up to the board individually and write their name and draw a person. Both of these have been issues for our girl. My husband did not see this, but the teacher told him later that when she called our daughter up and told her what she needed to do (name and person), our girl thought about it for a second, then went over to the attendance board and grabbed her card with her name, carried it over to the board and used it to help her spell her name! She wrote her name on the board and she drew a stick figure person, just like the teacher had requested! The teacher was very impressed -- and so were we! I overheard the teacher telling another teacher at the school that our daughter had really improved. It's been a trying few months, but we are happy that we kept working with her, kept advocating for her, and tried to consider every possibility to make the right decision for her and to give her every opportunity to move along to kindergarten.

Volunteering at School

This past Saturday I hosted the carnival at my daughter's preschool. It has been a whirlwind of preparations, a whirlwind of an event, and a whirlwind of emotions. As I may have mentioned before, our preschool is a cooperative preschool that requires and depends on parent volunteers to keep the school running. In the four years that we have had children in this school, my husband has always assisted in the classroom (a few times a month) and I have always worked on a committee. This was my 3rd year (1 year with my elder daughter, 2 with my younger) as the Family Events Chairperson, and by the time the carnival rolls around each year, I am READY TO BE DONE! There are four events during the school year, board meetings to attend every other month, and a committee to organize. On top of working four days a week, taking care of the kids and the house, it gets to be tiring. But then I get through the carnival, the school year winds down, the summer break begins, and it's almost like childbirth -- you forget the pain once it's over and you are ready and willing to have another one! ;)

But this is different -- this was my last event and this year is our last at this preschool. We had two daughters go through this school -- we have a lot of great memories, and we've made lifelong friends. This year has been a little trying for us (I'm still working on that post...) and so more than ever I've been looking forward to the end of this school year and the end of the family event season. But the night before the carnival (after I hung my rosary in the tree for good weather!) as I was falling asleep I thought that I wanted to make sure and take everything in. I told myself to put aside all of the frustrations of the year, all of the stress of the carnival planning, and just appreciate that this is it -- the last year of preschool, the last carnival.

Easier said than done, unfortunately! I had the best intentions of really taking time to actually watch my "baby" at her last carnival -- I ended up doing face painting the entire time with my friend Kristin, and neither of us could come up for air! I had brought my girl with me to help set up, so I was able to take pictures and video of her in the bounce house before everyone else showed up, and I was able to spend a little time while I painted her face -- once with a kitty face (first of the day -- not great...) and the other with a pink fairy "flourish" along the side of her face -- better! Her sister, her dad and her Uncle Mark were all at the carnival, so I at least took comfort in knowing that she had other family members around to watch her and help out.

I found myself surprisingly emotional at the end of the day -- all of a sudden, the last event was over -- my baby is that much closer to turning 5, that much closer to kindergarten. The stress of the Family Events job is not quite over -- I still have to organize the big binder and turn it in for next year's chair. And while this is done, I have another volunteer job for my eldest daughter's school -- two actually! It occurred to me that I am one of the room parents, and it will be time to organize the parents to bring in items for the end of the year party. And this Friday, my friend Christine and I will be spending the day at the middle school teaching the kids how to churn butter for their pioneer day!

People sometimes tease me about volunteering for too much, and I sometimes think that I really need to stop saying "yes" to everything. But it's a wonderful experience to be involved with my children's schools, even if it's just in a small capacity (like room parent). And another thing that makes it worth it? Having my 10-year-old say to me, completely out of the blue the other day, "Mommy, I know you're busy, but it's really great that you sign up to do things at our schools to make us happy!" That right there would make me host another carnival! :)

Happy Mother's Day - 2011

My girls are tucked into bed after a busy Mother's Day! They let me sleep in this morning (yay!) and woke me up with cards and their traditional breakfast in bed. I always love it, no matter what they make, but I must say that as they get older the menu improves! ;) This morning it was cereal with a cut-up banana, a bagel and a glass of orange juice. Daddy had gotten up early and ran to the store for donuts, so they had a donut for breakfast but my littlest daughter sat next to me eyeing my breakfast and I was happy to share! I enjoyed visiting with my mom (who lives in Florida) on the phone, and then we were up and out in the yard planting all of the wonderful plants that my family let me pick out at the garden store the day before! The plants were part of my Mother's Day gift -- the other big part was my husband planting them! He's not an enthusiastic gardener, but we all worked together -- he and I digging and planting, and the girls were the waterers with their buckets filled with water.

Then after cleaning up, we were off to my aunt's house to have a bbq with the family and to visit with my grandmother. We got home in time for a quick bath for my little one while my 10-year-old wrote a bedtime story for her little sister, called "A Tea Party." We called and wished Grammy (my mother-in-law) a happy Mother's Day and then I read the story to the girls and tucked them into bed. Our celebration continues tomorrow -- I have the afternoon off to join my 4-year-old in her preschool class for their special Mother's Day celebration -- I can't wait!

I hope you enjoyed your Mother's Day, too!

Cute Kitty!

My little one is totally obsessed with cats these days. They are her favorite animal and she loves to pretend that she herself is a kitty cat. She is constantly meowing and purring (very realistically, I might add) and crawling around on the floor. She also likes to lie on her back and bat at things with her "paws." This morning after breakfast, she slipped on the tile floor and fell on her little behind. I said, "Oh Sweetie! Are you ok?" And she said, "I'm ok, I fell on my cat tail!"

Meeting New Friends Dealing with OCD

Today we had a really unexpectedly special experience. My girl and I made some new friends that we have a lot in common with - they are dealing with OCD, too.

My 10-year-old daughter was diagnosed with OCD a few years ago, and I don't mention it all the time on here because most of the time when things are going smoothly we hardly remember that she has it. And when it pops up and reminds us again, it's usually pretty draining to all of us. It's something that she (and we) may always deal with, but the bright side is that we are DEALING with it. We were fortunate enough to catch it early and find a great therapist who has helped our girl (and our family) learn how to manage it. We are also fortunate that it does not affect our daughter in school -- most people don't even know that she has it. She's a smart, funny, beautiful, totally normal kid and she happens to have OCD, or "stuck thinking" as we refer to it.

When she was first diagnosed, she went to see the doctor quite often, but after a year she was managing well enough that the doctor felt she no longer needed to see her. She told us that we could call if something came up. A year or so ago (after about 6 months had passed from her last appointment), my girl started having some nightmares. Her cousins were coming to visit and she didn't want to have nightmares while they were visiting, so she asked me if she could go and see the doctor again. We called, she went maybe 2 or 3 times, remembered what she needed to do to manage her worries, and then she was fine for a while. After we got home from spending Christmas with my husband's family, my girl seemed to have the flu and from there she began having stomach issues. We went to the regular doctor once, after hours care once, she was on medication for possible acid reflux, stayed home sick from school on 3 different occasions, and finally I thought to call the therapist. Turns out, it was her OCD again. The doctor said that stress "sits in the stomach." She was having physical symptoms of the worries in her head. So, back in February, she began to see the therapist again and quickly got back to feeling her old self again. At the last session she had a few weeks ago, we anticipated that that would be it until the next time something came up. But, her doctor asked if she would come in to meet another little girl who is a couple of years younger and also diagnosed with OCD. So, on my day off today, we went to the doctor's. I have a million things going on right now and had my to-do list in hand along with a notepad and some catalogs that I need to go through to prepare for the preschool carnival. All of that sat untouched as I sat in the waiting room watching my little one play and talking to the little girl's mom. We went to this appointment today thinking that we were (sort of) doing this little girl a favor, that maybe she could get some insight from my daughter. Instead, I think we all benefited tremendously. I met someone that I could relate to more than anyone I've talked to in a long time. Some of the details of our daughters' experiences with OCD are a little different but the emotions are very much the same. The hour went by so quickly and I found myself feeling like I wanted to exchange phone numbers or set up a play date or something. I didn't at that moment, but the girls had a similar experience in the doctor's office and we talked about getting together for another "group" session again in the future.

It turns out that the whole thing was organized because the little girl had expressed interest in meeting someone "like her." She, like my daughter, feels slightly isolated because they don't know anyone that has OCD like they do. The doctor told them today that it is extremely unlikely that they are each the only ones in their school who have OCD, but there is a stigma to it and no one seems to talk about it. My girl was quite nervous on the way to the appointment today, but when she came out at the end she was very happy and felt like she had made a new friend, and I think also felt like she isn't alone in what she goes through. It was a really positive experience for both of us and I talked my husband's ear off when he got home from work tonight, telling him all about my conversation with the other mother and all about what my daughter and I spoke about on the way home.

There are so many things that we all deal with -- no one has a perfect life, everyone is dealing with something. Imagine if we could all just open up a little bit and talk to others about what we are going through. What a difference that would make in the world.