Today, August 18th, was the first day of school for our kindergartner, Nate. He was so excited. It was kind of funny to see all of this unfold this year. I was quite tentative about sending Nate to school this year. Nate turned 5 on August 8th, and thus, he just made the deadline to go to school this year (the cut off date is August 31st). I have been watching Nate a lot and trying to determine if he was really ready to go to school. I spent months and months pondering and thinking and praying about this. I had basically decided not to send him, because I was not really getting a sure answer about what to do. I kind of decided that this was my decision, and Nate would be OK, either way.
However, the decision of not sending him to school kept making me feel a little sick to my stomach. I did not want to hold Nate back just in order to keep him closer to me for a while (even though that is what I would really like). The more that I talked about this with my husband and my family, the more I felt that Nate was probably ready to go. Jake put it this way: Let’s think of this as an experiment. If Nate has a hard time, we can always pull him out of school and do it again next year. I decided this was probably the right approach for us. I think another reason I was having a hard time thinking of sending Nate to school is that he is not quite the scholar that Eric is. You have to remember that Eric was my last child to go to school. Eric finished the reading book and could read everything at the young age of 3 and a half. Nate has struggled with his letters and reading. But with all of that being said, he does know all of his letters and he is half way through the reading book and doing a great job. I just had to remind myself that Nate is not Eric and that is OK. Every child is so different and I am not sure if this is the “right” decision, but it is what we felt we should do right now.
Whenever I am doubting my decision, I just take myself back to when Corey was in kindergarten. Corey also has an August birthday. When he started school, he could not read, but we worked on the reading book, and by January, he could read everything in sight – which still made him ahead of 90% of the class. Now Corey is in 8th grade and he is usually the youngest, but he is happy with that. He does great in all of his classes and I have no doubt that he is where he should be. Is Nate the same case? Well, as I said earlier, they are all so different, and we will just have to wait and see.
Now back to Nate. Nate was actually quite worried about starting school because we really had not talked about it a lot, since I was not sure if I was sending him. When we finally started to talk about it, he was very nervous. He kept telling me he did not want to go because he would not know anyone there. I reassured him and told him the people that we know that could possibly be in his class. This did not help very much. Then his new backpack came in the mail and everything started to change. He was so excited to wear it and feel so big. When we went to the meet the teacher event at school, Nate did not say a lot, but I think he started to feel more comfortable. After his father’s blessing on Monday night, everything seemed to be right on course. When all of his brothers got to go to school on Tuesday, he was sad that it was not his turn yet.
Finally, the big day arrived – today. Nate was so excited and ready. Jake actually took him to school because I was nervous that I might cry and he might cry and it might all go really bad. Luckily, he waved goodbye to Jake and all was well. I picked him up today and he was very happy. He got to play and paint and go to recess – what could be better? I am very happy that they have a new schedule with shorter days. The elementary kids now go to school everyday (no short day Wednesday) from 8:00 until 2:00. This gives kids more time at home and I love it. Nate was very tired, and when we went to pick up Jared and Corey from middle school, he fell asleep. When we got home, he woke up, went inside, and promptly went to sleep on the couch. After his nap, he told me that he had to rest because school had made him tired.
 |
| What a day! |
What a cutie. I sure love my little boy and I am excited to see him enter this new phase. Today, he told me that he missed me and he asked Reagan and me if we had missed him. And, of course, we did. We love you, Nate the Great!
No comments:
Post a Comment