When people are in high school or college, when they think about kindergarteners, they probably think about kids that are babies, barely out of diapers, a stone’s throw from being out of the womb. When people become parents, and realize that from the day a kid is born, there’s still around five years before kindergarten comes into play, and it feels like a lifetime before the kid is walking, then is out of diapers and if you’re like my kids, navigating through three years of preschool before entering elementary school.
My firstborn is now a kindergartener, and is going to freaking elementary school now.
I still remember with crystal clarity, the days and nights spent at the hospital with #1 when she was born and was kept at the NICU on account of being premature. I remember the hospital being closed off to visitors shortly after #1’s birth because the first COVID-19 death had occurred within a day, and began ravaging its way across the entire planet.
I still remember the diapers, the apnea monitor, the first time meetings with grandparents. I remember the first solid food, the first crawl, the first steps. The introduction of #2 into the mix. The revolving door of shitty nannies, feeling like life was nothing but one big shit show trying to raise two kids in a fucked up society.
I also remember all of the extraordinary things, like all the glimpses of intelligence and emotional growth. Traveling and watching my kids experience the world and new things. Going into preschool, and meeting new kids for the first time and learning from peers, and seeing the breakneck speed in which she began her educational journey.
And now, kindergarten. Elementary school. Five years later, in elementary school. Five years more, and it’ll be middle school. By then, she’ll probably be 11 going on 24, thinking she has all the answers to the world. Three more years, and then comes high school where she’ll inevitably think she has life figured out, and I used to make jokes about how with each life’s milestone achieved, that she should go out and get a job next, but at this rate, such remark will become a reality sooner rather than later.
Similarly recently, I saw some memes about how now is the introduction of the 2020 COVID babies into the school system, and varying remarks about how teachers should be ready, but I can’t really imagine what it is there’s any need for concern over. Responsible parents kept their kids safe through the worst of the pandemic, and by the time #1 entered preschool, coronavirus was way less a threat than it was initially. She never had to wear a mask during the height of masking up, and she started preschool at the appropriate time and age, and I don’t think her interpersonal growth was really stunted at all by the pandemic.
Frankly, such a COVID-related designation to be watched and observed really should be the classes of 2032-2035, where those were the kids, already grown, who had to completely alter their school experience, starting school in-school, getting pulled, adjusting to remote learning, and then heading back. But not my kids, either of them, as far as I’m concerned, they’re as normal as things were pre-COVID.
The point is that it’s absolutely bonkers to me that my oldest child has just started elementary school. She is now going to school with mythical wife, as she’s a teacher there, and has conveniently placed her where she works, giving our child the ultimate in safety nets knowing that mom is in the building with her, every day.
Which is good, because #1 has expressed nerve of moving onto the next level, because she’s spent the last three years of preschool with widely the same kids every day, and now there’s not a single one of them going to be in the same class with her now. I’ve reminded her that most of her classmates will also be going through the same thing, and it’s also exciting to be in a situation where there’s going to be so much new-ness across the board.
And it’s not just for #1 too, because of this one step for her life’s journey, is a change for pretty much everyone in my household. I’m now having to get up even earlier in the mornings to make sure #1 is out of bed earlier and fed, because she now goes to school with mythical wife at the teacher’s schedule, and I’m basically having to make breakfast twice, since #2 is now going to preschool by herself, on a completely different schedule.
Inevitably, that’s what life is, constant change and adapting to it, but in spite of my occasional gripes of having to be the earliest riser and on point with my parenting, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my children, and I’m not mad or grumpy about having to alter my schedule. It’s more exciting to witness the growth of my kids and seeing what comes next in their life’s journeys.
