When our oldest daughter, Catie, was in Preschool, one of my friends taught the four-year-olds at her school. I ran into her the summer before Catie started in her class and she asked how Catie was coming with writing her name.
“Writing her name?!” I was shocked. “She’s only four.”
“Some kids can write their own names when they start PreK-4. Others have to work on it the whole year,” my friend said.
Looking back, I can see my friend was right, but I can also see why I was shocked by the idea a four-year-old writing her own name. The summer Catie turned four was the summer the twins had just turned one. The critical mass of our kids were learning to walk and talk. Our mornings were filled with toddler toys on the living room floor. Walkers! Ball poppers! The Wiggles! The twins ate soft, mushy foods and so did Catie and me. In the afternoons, we all took long naps.
Even though Catie was turning four, our household was built around the infants’ patterns. Sitting at a desk and practicing her name?! This seemed like something big kids did. I might as well hand her a page of long division.
Now Catie is ten and she does spend her afternoons practicing long division. We construct our afternoons and evenings around her huge homework load. The twins also have lots of First Grade homework so it makes sense to all gather around desks and do worksheets, memory work, and spelling reviews.
Because the critical mass of our kids live in an academic world, our four-year-old, Nate, learned to write his name a long time ago. What else is he supposed to do when the critical mass of Hergenraders, all his playmates, are buried in books? He practices his letters. That skill I could have never imagined Catie mastering as a four-year-old is woven into who Nate is.
The last kid is the first to write his name and the first to pick up a shoe box and announce, “Hey! A rectangular prism!”
Looking back, I see my teacher friend had lots of different kinds of kids in her classroom. Fourth-child boys who spend their afternoons at a desk instead of playing with ball poppers, but also first-child little girls who spend their afternoons watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and diaper changes instead of Bill Nye the Science Guy.
The first-shall-be-last wisdom probably extends into every other development: Catie will be the last among her friends to get a cell phone, but by the time Nate’s in junior high, we’ll see it’s not a big deal, and he’ll be the first of his friends. Catie will be the last of her classmates to see a concert, but Nate will tag along with his older brother and be among the first.
When Catie turns 18, I will cry and gnash my teeth when she leaves for college. She will be one of the last of her friends to get out of her mother’s arms.
But (*sigh*), when Nate turns 18, we will have embraced the empty-nester lifestyle, and we’ll be a little more okay with him leaving. And while his oldest-children friends will linger with their smothering parents, Nate will walk right out the door, and be the first.
And that’s okay.
