Shayla, my four and a half year old daughter is now successfully enrolled in her first full-time Pre-K. We just enrolled her in a Pre-K program at a local elementary here in our town. We are excited for her for the learning and the social integration that this will initiate, and I am excited for me and the possibility that I will be able to get back to some kind of work however partial. This will be her first bonafide Pre-K experience. She went to a 1/2 day - Pre-K last season, but it was short lived as she was the only English speaking child there. We didn't realize that it would turn out to be that way initially when we sent her, but upon discovering that there were not enough staff to meet her needs as far as translation and communication went, we pulled her out. It was starting to become obvious at home that the experience was frustrating her.
We are hoping that this current program and school will be a good fit for her. We think that it will be. It was 'Meet The Teacher' day today and so we went and did just that. We like the teacher and have a good feeling about this.
Shayla has been requesting more Spanish language instruction, and while the other Pre-K environment didn't work so well for her, it was due to the inherent structural, program, and management flaws within the organization itself and not due to a resistance of Spanish language integration for Shayla. Fortunately for us, this school has a 'dual-language program' starting at the Pre-K level. So we are looking to get Shayla into one of those classes. I speak rudimentary Spanish, which is plenty to get along with if you're traveling in a Latin country or many others, for that matter, but my skills are a far cry from developed and smooth 'conversational Spanish'. We are hoping to give Shayla a leg up on developing a possible bilingual skill set.
This Pre-K schedule is a full one at M-F, 6.5 hours per day. I am excited for her for the learning and the socialization with her peers that this will provide, but I am also excited to get back to some kind of consistent work, which is it's own form of excitement both for me and my mental state (read: being around other adults as more than being a dressing on a salad or icing on a cake) as well as the supplemental effect that it should have on the family's finances. Yay, yay, and yay!
Most people who have young children, who don't happen to be the unfortunate folks (my opinion) who happen to start their day at 6 a.m., come to celebrate the day when their little darling can start to begin their day on their own and perhaps get their morning bowl of cereal or a piece of fruit from the family fruit bowl, before mommy or daddy comes sauntering in shortly thereafter. It's a nice benefit I must say. I've written several times before about the plethora of potential disasters associated with this 'blessing', and although they are still very alive and well, we still happily take the potential risk along with the unquestionable benefits associated with this family gamble. It would seem that it must be easy enough for a parent to wake up at the same time as their little Pre-Ker, but when you combine the reality that this is the same child that they get up with in the middle of the night when they've had a bad dream (such as last night) and are reticent to let their parent leave for a 1/2 hour afterwards until they are fast asleep (and this happened to take place twice for me last night), then it becomes a much more understandable reality. Fortunately, the only thing that our child has beaten her drum for in those early morning hours of exploration is the hunt for pure, unadulterated white sugar confections. Namely, anything that is artificially sweet, meaning Not Naturally sweet. What she found in her quest while rummaging through the cabinets today happened to be cake sprinkles and honey. She also found some parmesan cheese (grated) to eat out of the shaker. She also found, and then threw away, some biscuit mix that must've looked to her like grated cheese. That's just as well because we no longer eat that stuff anyway. Basically she was on the hunt for sugar, which in it's refined form we have found it best not to feed her if we want her to be a happy, content little girl. We have given her the other before, the result of which is not a pleasant picture. Enough said. When these little solo culinary adventures take place we don't get mad at her because frankly, we would have (and likely did) do the same kind of thing if allowed. We show some mild dissapointment at the most and just silence in our cleaning in the least. We simply dust off, clean off, wipe up, sweep, and spot mop whatever needs it. Generally, the couch has taken most of the abuse. .....Poor old couch. We might be happy that our little girl, at 4 1/2 has proven herself able to start herself on a parentally-sanctioned 'breakfast of champions' while her mom and I are still rubbing the 'sleep' out of our eyes, but it comes with a price. That price is that there is a possibility that on certain days she just might choose to color outside of the lines and go-a-frolicking through the kitchen wreaking havoc and destruction in her little wake. Oh well, I guess we're just okay to take some tart along with our sweet. Besides, after this week she starts Pre-K, which means that we will now be yet, another one of those families that rises promptly at 6 a.m. everyday, scary dream or not.
How is it that I came to be relied upon and looked to for explanations of all things mechanical, spiritual, perfunctory and otherwise? Since when should I be a source of knowledge and direction? Parenting is such a great responsibility for the directing, steering, and guiding of another human being! Not that they're willing to accept your direction, but just the fact that you are in the seat of being the supposed dispensary, is enough to sober you up something serious. I sit and ponder this question late at night when all the other sounds of living have retreated into the walls. I do not know what marks me as special for this job, probably nothing. I'm just an ordinary Joe like the next guy. I do know that I am a dad and that it is in my job description to have the answers or at least my version of 'the answers' and I guess that's all that any of us actually have to begin with. I love it and wouldn't trade it for the world, but gone are the days that I didn't have to speak until venturing forth into the outside world from my cave in that neighborhood near you. Now, I have to speak and it's preferable that it be something worthwhile with an answer of some kind contained therein.
Parents are the ones who have to pull answers out of thin air at a moments notice. Sure, there's mobile Google and all that, but it's a tad more complicated as any parent can attest: we are 'on the spot fiction creators' for our little offspring. When I step back and listen to myself, I have to laugh. I spout a kind of daily dribble that wouldn't even be caught in the pages of a popular book of fiction in this day and age. My client simply Has to have her answer and she will not stop until I give her one! Then, she is duty bound to question the veracity of my answer once given. This is where the fiction comes in. A lot of the time my bibliography is a total phantom, but hey, it washes just fine for a four year old.
The tough part of being the Dispenser of Information for your kids is the repetitious part of it. That part is a bit painful to me. Maybe it will ease in time as I get used to repeating myself for hours on end. Haha. Really, it does feel like we do it for hours on end, and it's not actually that much of a stretch of the truth. We get tired of saying phrases like "don't run in the house" and "will you please not interrupt me while I am speaking" and many others of the same ilk. It's funny in a way, but it's the kind of funny that can send you to that small concrete room with the tight fitting clothes before your time. I mean really! It is cuter on some days than on others. Somedays I don't want to come up with an answer for why dogs aren't purple or why it's totally necessary for us to wait at red lights even though no one is coming down the cross street when I've already told that story a dozen times, to the same person no less. I am tired of explaining the scientific proofs behind why we should not run full throttle down slick, wet sidewalks or why running through the house while looking behind you is not the best thing to do twenty times a day as the odds of avoiding a face plant are not particularly in your favor. "Why, why Daddy, why", she earnestly questions with that blended look of innocence and fearlessness that belong only to the highly evolved or the completely clueless!?? These things are both astounding and stupefying and leave me with this tingling sensation in my head which tells me that I really know nothing about life at all. Good, I guess I'm off the hook until tomorrow. It's actually nice to know that it's way more complex than I thought it was.
As parents, we repeat these things over and over because if you do not, nobody will and your little golden angel is still just as surprised and insulted when gravity plummets them to the concrete as they are after you've warned them a hundred times. So, I do like any parent would do, and warn her 150 times. You say these things to your child because you love them, yet you still wonder if your tongue is going to fall out from overwork before they get the point or right at the moment that they get it. You just hope and pray that they do get it, or at least that they will.....at some point. "One day...", I keep thinking to myself, she's going to understand this stuff. One day.... One day, she'll probably think that she has all the answers, and that I'm some nearly extinct koo-koo bird living in my own little tree in my own little Country on my own little planet. So, I should probably savor these days that she comes to me with every little question about every little thing because I know that it won't be forever, and it really is precious no matter how hard it is. I used to be the silent type. (My partner is probably laughing as she's reading this....My mother too.)....Okay, maybe I was never quite the silent type, but at least I could be silent whenever I wanted to withdraw and not talk. Being a dad takes this option out of the equation for probably..Hmm....? I don't know how many years, and then it gets reversed, right? Sure. That's obvious enough. But for now, we her parents are the talkers and the explainers and the answer-givers for any and all things, and so I try, however feebly, to answer the Call.
May God have mercy.
Things that happen almost daily....