The kids and I were at the playground earlier this week and I started talking to another Mom. It turned out that her son and Daniel are just a couple of days apart in age. As any mothers out there know, the playground chit chat is generally all the same – “Oh, he’s so cute.” “How old is she?” “ Do you live in XYZ town?” But this woman threw a curve ball question at me, she said “Will you be holding him back or will you send him to Kindergarten when he turns 5?” Now for those not up to speed on schools around here, your child needs to be 5 on September 1st in order to be able to start Kindergarten. The dilemma comes in when you have a child with a late summer birthday if you should send them when they just turn 5 (and have them be the youngest in the class) or wait a year (and have them be older). Now is this a valid dilemma/question? Yes, but let’s remember she was asking me about DANIEL. He is 15 months old and can only say 1 word. I simply replied with “Oh, I’m not sure.” And then she went on (and on) about how she’s really not sure what to do, she wishes his birthday wasn’t when it was, how she has been doing research on when to send him , etc., etc. I couldn’t believe that this is what is keeping this woman up at night. There are plenty of other things that I have to worry about now. Will he eventually learn how to step off the stairs or will he just continue to give himself partial concussions every day? Is today the day that the bouncy ball that is forever in his mouth going to travel right down his wind pipe? Will he decide to sit down in the tub before or after he cracks his skull open? These are the things that I am worrying about right now, but in all honesty, they are not really keeping me up at night. I figure I’ll wait until he’s I don’t know maybe four (or five – gasp!) before I start really stressing myself out about Kindergarten. There is plenty to worry about with kids so I’m just going to stick with worrying about it one stage at a time!
