To Preschool or Not to Preschool?
I am so indecisive! For the last 2 years I've said Rory was definitely going to need preschool. The child is good-natured, beautiful, engaging, social to a fault, extremely imaginative, etc. But she cannot be bothered with things like coloring, glue, learning her ABC's, counting, etc. I mean she seriously cannot be bothered. She turns 5 in September, but we've decided to wait to send her to kindergarten and have always planned to put her in preschool this year. I thought we'd missed out since I did no research and did not find her a place this summer. In my defense, I've had just a few other things going on.
This week, however, I found just what I was looking for. There's only one ahead of her on the waiting list for a church preschool about 15 minutes away. It is 3 days a week; I feel good about the program; and it is reasonably priced. So why can't I just press "submit" on the application? To be honest, it's mostly selfish reasons. I kind of hate the idea of sending her off to be under someone else's influence this early, but that's not the selfish part. The selfish part is not really wanting to spend the money, not wanting the scheduling issues (the timing doesn't quite coincide with Camden's schooling so there's going to be about 30 minutes of wait time in the morning and afternoon), and let's be honest - this means I'd have to actually be dressed with make-up on and presentable 3 mornings a week.
I could teach her preschool things myself you say? Ummm, yeah. We've tried that. Did I mention she's social? All she wants to do is talk. She is DYING to go to school. I think she probably needs a year of preschool if only for the reason that she needs to learn that school isn't just a whole new audience for her. And she probably needs a little introduction into structure.
And this is what Rory thinks of preschool.
So someone tell me to just do it.
Comments
I absolutely do not put on makeup or do my hair to take Briar to preschool. Dressed and out of pj's, yes? But, that's as far as I go!!!
But it sounds like you recognize the benefits of sending her and that she will, in fact, benefit. We're in a similar boat and realized that O needs both the speech help and the social help, as she is painfully shy (funny how our girls are opposites in that respect!) :)
So, it's a decision you have to make that's best for your family. 3 days a week might just be the right balance of you getting some free time as well as Rory time, and Rory getting some social interaction she likely craves and needs, with a balance of sweet mama time.
It's also nice to have an authority figure that isn't me. Weeks of "no hitting" attempts were made here, and then his teacher's had it resolved in a day once I brought it up. (No kidding.) It's also nice that I can do more fun things since I'm not stressing out over the fact that my kid needs to learn stuff like letters and numbers. That's what school is for, right?! So I devote our "education" time to science projects like soda geysers. (Seriously)