Monday, March 27, 2017

Kindergarten???

Sidekick has been in quite a PITA lately, and we have just not been jiving together, if that makes sense.  For the past several weeks, he's been having some issues at school with listening, staying on task, etc. Every day I would get a bad report about him which would just piss me off and lead me to getting frustrated with him. His behavior made me question sending him to kindergarten in fall. He'll be five in July, and the cutoff for going to kindergarten is August 1st, so he will be one of the youngest in his class. Academically, he scores way above where he needs to, but his behavior at school reinforces that he is just young, maybe too young to go to kindergarten.  I've questioned the kindergarten thing ever since I got pregnant with him (truth!), probably because I'm in the education field, so I know the challenges of a young kid vs. an older kid.  So my struggle has been this:

Do I hold him back because he's young and with "youngness" comes behavior problems even though academically he is more than ready?

OR
 
Do I send him because he is academically ready, and cross my fingers that he has a good teacher who will work with him?
 
 
This shit keeps me awake at night.  I feel like this one decision will set him up for success or failure for the rest of his educational career. I worry that holding him back will create more/different issues because he'll be so darn bored, and that will cause additional problems.
 
Last week, he did a 180!  He just turned into this different, lovely kid.  His reports from school were amazing.  His behavior at home was perfect.  I yelled less, got frustrated less, and truly enjoyed being with him every single day.  What happened to him?  I don't think I yelled at him one time this past weekend. I enjoyed every minute with him.  I loved that he was so good and helpful while we ran errands, cleaned, did laundry, etc.  He was a dream.  He was my sweet boy who I adored more than ever.  Of course I loved him while he was being a PITA, but there were plenty of times that I didn't like him.
 
If THAT kid stays around, I am 100% confident that he will be ready for and will be successful in kindergarten. But I'm pretty sure that I have jinxed myself by putting all of that in writing, and he'll do a 180 again in the wrong direction. That's just the way my luck is.  But then I look at this cute face, and I remind myself that it's possible he can continue being the awesome kid he's been!
 
 

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2 comments:

  1. Catie.fieldMarch 31, 2017 at 10:28 PM

    I was in a similar predicament with my son and ended up keeping him back a year. I would have rathered that he be academically bored because I could always work with him at home. It's hard to lose that "bad kid" label once it's been applied and I didn't want to deal with it for the next 12 years!!

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    1. SMC in STLApril 3, 2017 at 11:06 AM

      I totally agree!!! When is your son's birthday and what is the cutoff? The people in the school district that evaluated him have told me that for my son, holding him back when he is already beyond ready academically will result in other issues/problems at school. I feel like I need to rely on the experts since this is all new to me. Right now, he is rocking it in pre-k and he is behaving perfectly after he did his 180. He even told me that he realized he now knows how to control how he behaves. So... if this great behavior continues, I feel much more confident that he'll be okay. Now if he swings back the other way, I'll be back to this predicament, but since I have no Plan B, I'm kind of screwed. Ahhhhh...

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