Kindergarten Mom Jitters

Getting ready for the school year is easy for me. The long list of supplies, buying new uniforms and shoes, stocking the fridge with lunch items, scoping out the new teacher… These are just items to tick off my to-do list. Certainly nothing to get weepy and emotional about.

Then yesterday morning as I chided my son to eat faster so he won’t be late for camp… as I always do, it hit me.

He’s going to be in Kindergarten. My BABY is going to be in Kindergarten!

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was peering into a bassinet at the little person I just bore from my body?

Weak, dizzy, and in pain from my emergency c-section, I realized things are never going to go perfectly according to my plans ever again, but one thing was for certain. I love this tiny being so much that I would commit murder to protect him. Five years later, I’m somehow supposed to let him just grow up and leave me?

It’s such a paradox. You raise your children (hopefully) to be self-sufficient and independent adults. You expect that one day they will  lead lives of their very own, apart and away from you. Yet, in practice there’s a well of self-doubt making you want to rush in and take over at every step along the way.

It’s not like he hasn’t been gradually working up to Kindergarten. We both have. For the past two years, he’s been in preschool. It started with two half-days a week. By the end of this past school year, he was attending three full-days a week. This summer, I signed him up for camp five days a week, which was conveniently held at his school and offered swim lessons, sports, and field trips. Some of his friends and teachers from preschool would even be there, too. Zero transition angst, right? I thought I won the working mom jackpot until we walked into the first day and realized it was nothing like I expected…

It wasn’t the cozy, touchy-feely sandbox of preschool. It was CAMP… with big kids who were used to being pushed (rather than gently transitioned) from one activity to the next. It’s wasn’t snacks, circle time, and making sure he eats all of his lunch. It was games he could keep up with, rejection from kids who weren’t that interested in hanging out with a “little kid”, and answering to camp counselors who didn’t necessarily understand his little five-year-old idiosyncrasies.

By the second week, he made such a scene at morning drop-off that the camp director told me I couldn’t leave him if he was being hysterical. I realized this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought, but I had to work, I had meetings, I had OTHER stuff scheduled during this tiny sliver of time…

Reluctantly, I became THAT mom who writes letters to the teacher, demanding the special treatment and changes to the rules. He was quickly reassigned to a class called “Kindergarten Readiness”, ensuring that he was with the kids his own age all day. After that we had a rather pleasant summer, but what if I had  not intervened?

Our mornings were filled with much tears and anguish, so of course, I had to intervene. But  it’s a keen reminder that I’m not always going to be there to mediate, assess, and solve all of his world’s problems.  At some point, he has to do this one his own and I’m going to have to learn to let him.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to keep him home from his final days of camp so I can make googly eyes at him and randomly attack him with hugs and kisses. It’s my little way of  squeezing  every last drop of summer vacation, and possibly making sure he FULLY appreciates his hours of independence and self-sufficiency.

Remember: Leave a comment on this post for an additional entry into our Fill the Backpack giveaway. Each member of Splash Creative Media is offering a backpack overstuffed with over $750 worth of  Back to School merchandise.  Enter to win on any or on all of our blogs. 

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Splash Creative Media as part of the Fill the Backpack Campaign. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are those of my own. 

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