VISITING PRESCHOOL

Thursday morning was C’s preschool screening day for Head Start. Our appointment was at 8:30 in the morning, and I was really worried about it. For one thing, he had a hard time falling asleep the night before, so he wasn’t going to get as much sleep as he normally does. He also has a cold. I was worried this would make him uncooperative during his screening, making them think that he needed help or something, when he’s really very smart (well, I’m biased there, but he does know all the basic colors, he can count to 20, he knows almost all the letters, and he can sing the ABC’s--and a bunch of other songs.) I’m a big worrier in general, so I was pretty stressed.

I guess that I worried too much about it, though. I woke him up with “It’s time to go visit your preschool”, and he sprang right out of bed. No tears or anything, so the sleep thing wasn’t a biggie. C was really excited to be going for a visit; he’s been asking to go to preschool for a while, so I know he’s ready. He had some breakfast and some cold medicine and we were on our way.

We walked into the Head Start building where there were a bunch of other parents and 3 and 4 year olds that had the same screening time as us. I don’t know why, but I had figured that the screenings were individual appointments, so I was a little surprised. C got a nametag, and R and I got a big stack of forms to fill out, which included what I like to call The Form From Hell, in which I had to fill out just about every single little thing about C. When I wasn’t paying attention, R filled out all the easy forms and left me the two hard ones (one being The Form From Hell). Not fair. One of the preschool ladies came and asked C if he wanted to come “play”, which was code for going and taking care of his screening. They would be testing his motor skills, vision, hearing, and if he knows colors and whatever. C looked up at the lady, took her hand, and went right off with her. He didn’t even look back. Nope, the sleep and the cold weren’t a problem. As I was watching him walk off with the lady, I had one of those “motherly moments” and I had to blink back the tears. If you’re a mom, you know what I’m talking about, those times when it hits you that your baby is growing up, slowing making his way toward independence. One part of you wants it that way, while another part wants him to stay a loving little snuggling baby forever. I didn’t think about it for too long, though, since I had that lovely Form From Hell sitting blank in front of me. I don’t even want to see what I’ll be like on the actual first day of preschool…oh boy.

While C was doing his screenings, we had our meeting with the “Family Services” people, to give them the forms and our financial information. With Head Start, if you fall into a certain financial area you get preschool paid for. I had figured that we would be right in that financial area, so we hadn’t really looked at other preschools. But it turns out that we are only a couple of hundred dollars over this, and we were told that because of this we would probably be put on a waiting list. My first thought was, I’m filling out all these forms and doing the screening and telling C that this will be his preschool and now you want to tell me that he might not be able to come here now? We then found out that C did really well in the screening, which you would think would be a good thing. But, no, it just puts us on the waiting list more since they take the kids with the lower scores first. They told us that for the four year olds the financial area his higher since it’s their preparation for kindergarten program, so we would get into that. But I don’t really want to wait until he’s four, because I feel that he’s ready for preschool now. They also said that they do most of their placements in May, but sometimes it is August before some people know they are in. August? I don’t really think we could wait around that long to see if he gets in. We know that if we don’t hear anything from Head Start by the end of the month, we’re going to look at other preschools.

R and I were discussing it, and now we wonder if Head Start is even where we want C to be. It seems to us that it’s a place for kids that need a lot of help. We may not have a whole bunch of extra money, but C can already do a lot of the stuff that they are going to be helping these other kids to learn. I know that preschool is mostly for school readiness and they learn through playing, but I’d like him to be able to learn some stuff that he doesn’t already know. So I guess we might be paying for preschool next year after all. I don’t know…

As we were leaving, C turned towards the building and yelled “Bye bye my school!” If C ends up not going to Head Start, how am I going to convince him that the new place is his school, and not the Head Start building? I don’t know…

I didn’t think this whole preschool thing was going to be this hard for us. :(