Thursday, July 29, 2010

Preschool Perspective

Baby Lash Vegas Houston
My 4 year old is starting preschool next month and that fact is causing feelings in me I am not used to. I am not a very sentimental person. I am often the mom without the camera during a party or major life event. I am the mom who treats her kids like little adults causing other moms to describe me as “not very maternal”. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my boys, I am just not that sentimental about things. Until now. I think I’ve been caught up the last 4 years in the day to day care and survival of having two children that are only 13 months apart. Being with them 24/5 has left me a little burnt out on the whole “oh my gosh” of motherhood at times. Last week that all changed when I toured the first preschool for Lash and realized he was leaving me for the real world. I actually felt sick to my stomach during the tour and could not bring myself to register him that same day (Lash and I went back and took care of the registration together).

The school was great but the realization of how old my son really is hit me like the swine flu and I couldn’t deal. When did he get so big? Are the staff and other kids going to treat him the way he deserves? He has been in daycare 2 days a week since he was 1 but that is a small in home daycare which is more like family than daycare. School means many different people and kids, new influences and attitudes. It means others are going to help shape and create the mind I have had the major task of building over the last 4 years.
I think back to when he was small. When he learned to talk or walk and I wonder, did I appreciate that properly. Did I do enough with him in the short time I had him all to myself? I know I am not the only one who feels this because mothers go through it ever day but sentimentality is an unfamiliar feeling for me. In my mind the days when he is obsessed with me and me only are ending, he might like his teacher better. He may find a little girl with short chubby legs and pretty hair to take my place in his sweet little heart. Most of all, it’s knowing that he is not a baby any more. He is officially a little man out to find his way in the world (I know he’s not moving out or anything) and this fact distresses me a little. I never realized how attached to my sons I had become until Monday of last week when I realized this was going to change everything.

School is a good thing and I am totally excited for him. He is a smart outgoing little dude with much to offer any classroom but, up until this point, he has been all mine to mold. I guess I have been oblivious to the way the years have flown by and visiting and registering Lash in preschool was an official end to my whole head in the sand attitude. Though he will only be going 3 days a week this is a precursor to Kindergarten and then 1st grade. Preschool is just the beginning to a whole career of education away from me.

Because of this whole experience consider this sentimentally challenged mom schooled and reborn! I will have a camera on that first day of school and I will keep every preschool memento my husband will allow (he hates hoarding of any kind). I will appreciate the day alone preschool is giving me with my 3 year old Remy, and I will try to make those days as memorable as possible. I will remember that my boys are just kids and will therefore often act in a manner that shows no common sense or impulse control and I will try to readjust my expectations of them because of that fact.

My first course of action in my sentimental awakening will be to appreciate my kids and their firsts more. If my husband and I do this whole parenting thing right my boys will grow up to be secure and contributing men that do not live with us. Though, after the feelings that came with something as simple as preschool I can only imagine the temporary breakdown that will ensue the day I have to drop them off at college or help them move into their first apartment in another city.

                                                            

6 comments:

  1. Hey lady I like the new blog design, very nice. I can totally relate to the not being sentimental mom thing. My mother yells at me for not keeping every scrap of paper my 4 year old breathes on. Don't worry, school will be an adjustment for both of you, but your plan to appreciate the time you have with your other son will absolutely help. Besides, in a few months you will be so up to your eyeballs in macaroni necklaces, you'll forget you were ever anxious about school!

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  2. I'm all set to eat my words when he finally goes to school and I drop him off and weep in my car. I'll try and stay strong though. haha! Thanks for commenting on my post. I read this post in my reader on my phone but finally got on the computer to actually comment!
    I feel ya. I really do, and you know this!
    Oh and Jesse is all about the boy not living with us forever. Because kids should love their parents but not want to live with them forever. This coming from he who now has his mother living with us now! haha!

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  3. OMG! Just separating from my baby makes me sick! It is the reason why I don't work! I can't leave her so long in a daycare! I don't know how I'm going to cope when I go back to school!

    Mom says I'm not very maternal, but I don't believe in spoiling children, and even though, Emma is only 10 months old, she's already learning that mommy will not hold her every time she whimpers--something mom considers mean.

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  4. I remember when my older son (just turned 6) went to preschool, I cried like a baby for about 1/2 hour. Then it hit me that I had some quiet time for a few hours twice a week and I got over it. My little guy (gonna be 3 next week) is starting preschool in September (we start at 3 around here and they go for 2 years) and I am soooo ok with it this time around. I am already planning my quiet time. HA!! We're coming to Vegas soon, so we have to touch base. We have everything booked, including some shows, so I will have to talk to you and see if we can work out something.

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  5. Oh sweetie I cried the first week my daughter went to school. But then I'm kinda emotional... I kept certain things from kindergarten, she didn't go to preschool, I got this accordion style file thing to keep her stuff from school in. That way I don't go over board and just kept the really great stuff and not every little thing. Don't worry you'll be ok.

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Don't hold back; I prefer the truth