Great School Debate

The BIG (small?) two-year-old Nate

Elisabeth and Sam on (or around) their first day in the two-day, two-year-old class. Click here to see Catie’s first day. It involved cake.

Let me just preface this one with a disclaimer: I realize that intense debating about whether I should send my two-year-old to school two mornings a week is a first-world problem. Not even just a first-world problem, but a privileged first-world problem. I am so blessed that I have the option to stay at home, the choice of several great, Christian preschools, and the blessing of kids who are eager to learn.
That said, let me also mention that the Which School and When are questions that so many of my friends struggle with. The debates, the questions, the pros/cons are endless. Endless, I tell you. I think about them all the time.
Here’s my interior dialogue 20 hours a day:
1. Really? I’m considering driving 40 miles (round-trip) two times a week so that our family can add ANOTHER (third) school to our already crazy-hectic schedule. Is that even worth it?
2. But Nate would really like school. In the end, he liked camp SO MUCH. He loves the chaos his brother and sisters provide when they’re here. He would like to make some of his own little friends. He would like to have his own “thing.”And they do so many fun things at school. Painting with shaving cream? How cool is that?!
3. Also those other little two-year-olds would want to be his little friends. And their moms would want to be my friend. I know because I have so been the mom of a two-year-old signing up for preschool, and who is anxious to meet friends. But, to be honest, I don’t have the time or inclination to make a bunch of friends thirty minutes from home. With this attitude, I would be the dud, snobby mom before I even started. What’s the point?
4. I have like 6,000 projects I want/need to accomplish. Seriously my energy and desire to write books(!), volunteer at the kids’ schools (!), refinish furniture (!), take pictures (!) etc., etc., etc. is ENDLESS. How nice would three hours, twice a week be for knocking some of those out?
5. In reality, I would probably drop Nate off and then go to the grocery store for two hours. Or worse, the craft store. Or way worse, the mall. For real.
6. Our family LOVES the Christ Memorial Preschool. During the years that the other kids went there (starting when they were Nate’s age), we made friends with the staff and fell in love with them. Plus, the director is one of my closest friends, who loves Nate like her own child.
7. My whole life I’ve dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom. Next year (2013-2014) we know that Nate will go to Westlake. This is the last year of no schedule, pj days, chatting together over Starbucks and asking each other, “What should we do today?”
8. The kids will be in school the rest of their lives. I’m going to have to have my own thing (career) when they all leave me. Seems like an awfully good idea to keep that up a bit with a book contract this year. A book contract would be SO MUCH easier to accomplish if Nate was entertained at school two mornings a week.
9. But, seriously, why do I have to complicate everything? The kid needs to be at home in his pjs with his mom all day everyday. Since his birth he has either had three domineering older siblings hovering over them, or been at home with a sick mama. Now that I’m healthy we can go to the zoo! We can meet friends at Kemah! I can take him to the beach! We can lay around on the playroom floor and play the iPad (which is what we’ll probably do).
10. He would learn more about sharing (not his strong suit right now) and playing nicely with others better at school than he would on the playroom floor. Maybe as a bonus, the teachers would also potty-train him.
11. If school got to be too much, we could not go every day. Maybe just skip December, as my friend Michelle suggested. If the drive becomes too inconvenient, we could just stay at home on Thursdays.
12. Really? If I can’t even make it to school for six hours a week, shouldn’t that be a sign it’s not a great idea?
12. But how nice to see our Christ Memorial friends all the time, especially if we go to church there.
13. But why are we making/continuing friendships with people who don’t live in our community? Wouldn’t it be so much smarter to invest in the relationships in the mile-radius of our house, rather than ones that take an hour (in traffic) to see?
14. The truth is, Nate won’t even remember this year. I have four kids, a husband, a God to serve (of course not in that order). If sending Nate to Preschool for a few hours gives me a break, then I need to embrace that.
And there you go…about five minutes of my internal struggles of my Great School Debate.
Comments? Thoughts? Questions? Rants?