Child Development Boxes…

Ramona was born with a flattened head, rather like ET. My midwife said in her 20 years of delivering babies, she had never seen anything like it. From that moment on, Ramona has had a hard time conforming to expectations. She is “very advanced for her age.” At 3 and some months, she happily works on “kindergarten level” work at home. The What to Expect From Your Two Year Old (or Three Year Old or Four Year Old) never did anything but make us feel abnormal. She never even fit into the growth charts doctors like to use, completely transforming her point on the chart with every visit (if that point was even on the chart). People find it highly suspicious that Ramona doesn’t develop to the professional guidelines.

Ramona started preschool early because she had a high interest in going. Because California has an age cut-off for kindergarten at 4 years nine and months, the age cut-off for preschool is 2 years nine months. Ramona started at 2 years 8.5 months and will enjoy three years of preschool. This year, they recommended that she stay back in the younger class so that she could make friends and keep those friends through the next two years of preschool.

Ramona was very upset because she loves her friend Jade so much and her other friends from class last year. All Ramona’s good friends are a year or more older than she is. Though I felt sad about separating her from Jade, if she goes with the younger class this year she can have two years with the same (albeit younger) kids. This idea makes Ramona cry.

The other day, however, I realized something was really amiss. As a coop parent, I do help work around the school for a discount on tuition. I took her with me to get the school ready and I noticed that she acted like a typical three year old (if that) at school. She asked me to put her shoes on! She has been putting her own shoes on for a year now! She was asking people the names of things like “fork!” I was really weirded out by her charades. Was she trying to conform to expectations? Or acting so she could get extra praise for “learning” new things?

So now I feel at a loss. I absolutely do not want to push her, but I also don’t want her to not be herself. As we were getting ready to leave the school I asked her about it and she told me she only wanted to be smart at home, and sometimes at Maria’s. I told her that her not acting smart in school was the reason that she wasn’t going to the “Big Kids” class this year in a very cold and snotty manner. It just popped out… and as soon as I said it I was sorry. I could see in her body and face that my words really hurt her. She quickly changed the subject by opening the mailbox and asking me why there was a wood block with screws in it in the back of it. Wow, she already knows how to stuff feelings…I answered her, thinking a subject change was a great idea. As I loaded her onto the bike I could see her watering eyes and she told me, “I want to be with Jade.” And a tear fell. “I want to go to the big kid class.”

I couldn’t get rid of the lump in my throat for most of the rest of the day. I am trying to loose the guilt. But those escaped mean words have acted as a red flag that something isn’t working out. The questions abound! Does it really matter that she dumbs herself down? I am going against Ramona’s wishes to put her in the younger class, but with the conventional wisdom of “child development” says she needs to be with kids her same age. I don’t feel like going against Ramona’s wishes corresponds with my ideal of letting the child have control of her own education, but at the same time, her “pretending to not be smart” behavior is what probably got her in the situation in the first place. Very young children do not have the experience to understand the full implications of big decisions like this, and isn’t it the parents job to guide her to the right decision? What is the right decision? Why is she acting? A lot of questions…

The big problem I have with the child development conundrum is that I see well-trained adults actually trying to fit children into the child development chart when they don’t fit. It is the backbone to the idea that it's good to separate children by age. It creates this whole world of abnormalities (gifted, special ed, etc) and organizes, pigeon holes and puts children in a sort of competition with each other, not to mention causes a whole plethora of insecurities in parents. Parents with “gifted” children are first looked at with suspicion, then animosity. Parents with “special ed” kids are treated like there is something wrong with their child (while holding off for a year on certain concepts might prove the child "normal").

Nearly everyone we meet asks Ramona what her age is, then they almost always make a comment about the way Ramona acts or looks based on what they think children of her age should be like. I used to be proud every time I would here how smart or mature or “present” she is, but then I started to get annoyed. We have a friend with a child who has a “speech issue.” Her mother feels quite insecure about it. People look at her as if they feel sorry for her and her daughter when they hear her difficulty with speech. That little girl creates the most beautiful art, several years advanced on the “development” charts. Of course, no one notices and the mother of the little girl didn’t even notice until I said something to her about it…and she even played down the art by saying, “I think she copied her older sister.”

In the end, I have worked out a few things to make my life a little less stressful. First, I have discussed with Ramona that when someone asks her age, she doesn’t need to tell them, and that she can say, “I don’t want to say" (she used to do this anyway). And then I wont say either. Of course she probably will say, because this is what people expect, but how nice it would be to make people think for a minute. We also moved Ramona into an afternoon class in her preschool, the one class with the full spectrum of 2.9 year olds to almost 5 year olds. I personally love the mixed age classrooms. I have also come to accept that Ramona is an actress by nature. She likes to try on different personas and be different characters. Maybe I don't need to worry about it and let her reveal what she wants to whomever she wants.

And I hope that one day, we will stop being obsessed with science, basing every thought on it. I think science is a tool, a way to get an idea. Science is soaked in human bias. Science is a piece, a fragment...we will never see the whole picture when focusing on just one piece of the complex puzzle that makes up humanity. In any case, how could we ever evolve or change as a species if we are always trying to fit into the boxes of yesteryear?

Ironically and coincidentally, as I write, Ramona is watching "Ages and Stages - Your Three Year Old" on PBS.

“Why stress about preschool?” Or “Preschool for Homeschoolers”

I don’t want to ever send my daughter to school. But it’s not that simple. For one, I lean towards the unschooling philosophy, where the child is in control of his or her own learning. If the child decides to go to school, my stopping her would not be letting her have control of her own learning. Ramona likes the idea of school, mostly because she likes people, lots and lots of people.

Preschool is different from regular school anyway. My mother convinced me to give preschool a try last year, and Ramona was always begging for more time with more kids. I gave it a try, but there were issues that bugged both Ramona and I, which I won’t go into in this blog other than much of it stemmed from age segregation and gender segregation issues. She does however want to go to preschool again. She has a daycare, which she loves to death, but there are only a handful of kids there half of which are infants or new walkers. She wants a larger group of kids closer to her age.

Because of our bad feeling around the issues we had at her school last year Preschool, we decided to look into the Parent Participation school. Ramona really liked it, and after talking about it for a day or so, flip flopping back and forth, we chose the new school. I thought I would be like “Great, I am glad she made her decision.” But instead I got nervous and scared. Her decision actually involves me very much. Parent participation meant I would be working in the school as well! My life isn’t only about Ramona. I have so many things going on. Am I ready to make this commitment for up to two years?

I assume this school would be a great opportunity to really be a part of Ramona’s education, and the children really do lead in this school. It would also be an opportunity for me to get some experience working in cooperative schooling situations with other parents. As a single parent with a super social daughter, the only way I could conceive of homeschooling is within a homeschooling cooperative.

On the other hand, my idea of a cooperative was not under the umbrella of the public school system. The new school is run through the Adult School and we are expected to attend parenting classes twice a month and to be on a committee. This school requires 3 days attendance, and then 4 days next year while the other school only requires 2 days and then three next year. What if I don’t like the school? What if I get a job that conflicts (not that I am looking for a 9-5 M-F job)? I don’t want to switch around schools. And if we decide we liked the old school better and went back, I would have lost my coop position (for reduced tuition) there. I need my own time, as I am taking new strides in my life, working to forge my own path…do I want to learn about child development? Isn’t my parenting style intuitive and empathic, rather then learned from the “experts.” Ahhhhhhhh! What to do.

Then I get a call from the 4Cs, the organization that offers childcare subsidies. They tell me I qualify, but that they couldn’t pay for childcare while I was working in the classroom because I would not be working for money. Well that settles it, back to the old School. But then I get a letter from the Parent Participation school talking about how much the parents add to the class, with songs, and scientific presentations…and I am confused and stressed AGAIN.

In all this I start to feel trivial and fanatical for thinking and stressing so much about preschools. It is just preschool, isn’t it? My amazing, active, successful friends don’t sit and obsess about preschools, they worry about more important things like the concentration camp called Palestine, or racist laws in Arizona, or assassinations and disappearances of Mayan resisters in Chiapas, or their art, or their jobs…

But preschools are important. The lives of our children are important. The experiences of the first years of their lives affect them for a lifetime. They dominate their unconscious minds and dictate how they relate to the world.  Social change comes from within people.  Schools are more important than the job I am looking into right now. Schools are important…Or the absence of them…they affect us our entire lives…Jeez I wish Ramona didn’t want to go.

Truth is Ramona will be going to good school that she likes.  It is walking distance. Kids love it. No worksheets or anything like that.  Lots of choice for the kids.  And she is in the afternoon class, where there is less age segregation.  But, I miss out on the cooperative experience. Maybe some day I will have another chance, a cooperative experience that is organic and evolves from community members that want something new and different for their kids, that isn’t part of this big centralized government with all its rules, regulations, bureaucracy, taxes and “proof.”