You Can't Go Back

September 25, 2010

You can’t go back. You can never turn back time and have a “do over”, so why do we let kids do it? Is it because we know this to be true and feel badly about it? You can never go back, are the words that keep filling my head these past few days.

We are in the middle of acclimation period here in California. Our daughter is trying to become acclimated to school, we are acclimating to this life; I am acclimating to having nothing to do.

Acclimation is the SAT word of the week. Within all this acclimation, I find myself wondering if I am making the right decisions about things. Specifically, am I doing the right things for my daughter and myself?

Let me go back, when we began our research on schools here in California, we became aware that her birth date would make her a first grader here. She had recently finished a five month stint in a private school kindergarten classroom, so we asked them how they thought she would fair in the first grade. We gave them a copy of the curriculum standards for our current school district, and we got a figurative thumbs-up on her ability to handle the course work. At no time did we ever consider asking her current school for an assessment of her skills or did we think she doesn’t belong in the first grade. After all we are parents in the 21st century. Most of us want to be on top of the pile via our children, and without even thinking it through that was where we were heading. She is five. She will be six in October. At no time did I ever think she can’t handle it. I mean, after all, her birthday falls in the timeline of those who are supposed to be considered first graders in California this year.

Then, the first day of school came. There we were nervously standing on the line, waiting for the teacher to open the door and allow us admittance to the room, and I began seeing the children around her, most seemed to be a head taller. Then, I began to hear the kids around her, all seemed to be mature well beyond her. She entered the room, the teacher closed the door, and we began our walk back home. I began to cry. Now that I look back, I may have been crying because I knew in my soul this what not the right room for her, not the right class, but at the time I thought it was just the idea that my baby is growing up so quickly. Well, duh, your baby will feel like she is growing up too fast if you throw her to the wolves of the first grade in California.

As the days have gone by, I have learned that one girl who sits near Nitalia has done kindergarten twice and is seven and a boy she sits next to just celebrated his seventh birthday. Did I mention she is not even six yet? I also learned that she is one of only three 5-year-olds in the class. I began to panic. Then, three days in the teacher asked for a conference. Nitalia’s behavior was not where it should be for the first grade. She was having trouble sitting still and was talking out of turn. Ok, I thought nothing serious and nothing new. Nitalia has been pegged as chatty and fidgety before, we can work on this, and we did. Then her ability to write drew attention. She needs to write without using capital letters, a skill I figured was taught in first grade, apparently I was wrong.

When I saw her first writing compared to the other kids in the class; on her sheet I saw what looked to me like a bunch of jumbled letters on a sheet of paper with repeated words and very little space between words, on the other kids sheets I saw neatly crafted letters that spilled into extensive simple sentences better than some of my ninth graders back in Minnesota. I knew we were in over our heads. Still, we worked on small letters, and leaving spaces, and being neat. Then, there was the problem with her reading ability. She is not the worst; no, she falls right into that void called borderline. Not good enough for benchmarks, but not bad enough for extra services. 91% instead of 95%, but there are at least five kids in her class who fall below that. Her own teacher’s enrichment group for reading was already filled, but the teacher next door had room and could take Nitalia, only catch? The group meets at 7:20 before school.

Here is a caveat; I do not handle stress well. I also internalize all of the issues my daughter experiences at school. Her shortfalls are mine; her strides…you get the picture; however, I am an adult, so the shortfalls feel like failures to me. I am sure, in fact I am positive these do not feel like failures to Nitalia, as she is five and loves school, but to me – I was devastated. I know this sounds immature, but at this point I don’t care. She is my baby. I worked damn hard to get her. I am not the greatest mother on earth, I am not even that good of a mom at times, but I do know that I love my child with every fiber of my being and when I feel things aren’t going well for her, well, it just echoes off my soul like an old, damp, dark cave.

We came up with behavior strategies to support the teacher in her quest to get Nitalia up to speed with the first graders socially and maturity wise, we worked with her to write more clearly using only small letters each day, and we began to push her to read each night. Mind you there have only been two and a half weeks of school. I could feel myself becoming bitchy with her when she used a capital letter in the middle of a word, I heard the crabby tone of my voice as I chastised her for not tracking the words with her finger as she read (a skill I had always thought a child should not use until now) and I realized I was not about to become that mother. Then, I drove her to school, waited as she had enrichment for reading, met her at the playground, kissed her goodbye, and ran directly into her reading teacher who proceeded to express to me that Nitalia was having difficulty with ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’, and ‘q’. She went on to show me a little hand game I could play with her to help get her up to speed, and as I walked away, I burst into tears.

Why was I doing this? Why was I working so hard with my five year old who had not even completed an entire year of kindergarten? Why did I want her to be in the first grade so badly in California, when she would be in kindergarten if we were still in Minnesota? Needless to say the conversation with the first grade teacher was not as helpful as I would have liked it to be. What I derive from our conversation is this; while Nitalia is chronologically 5 (almost 6) she does have some skills that allow for success in first grade. She is good at math, science and social studies; however, she is not 7 (for all surveying, the average age of the kids in her first grade class is 6.5 or 7) and therefore her maturity level is not the same. Let me be clear in saying that she is appropriately mature for a 5-6 year old.

There is a huge difference in one year. Every parent knows this, and while she can maintain a conversation with an adult at a level that would knock your socks off, she still thinks fart noises are funny, and emulates them out loud when another kids has had a gas problem. We would all laugh at this on the surface, but we all also know that it is unacceptable social behavior, and if one of our co-workers did it in a meeting we would chastise them and exclude them from our social circle. You know I am right. Well, in kindergarten we learn these behaviors are unacceptable and our teachers help us. Nitalia has not had that guidance from school. Also, coming from the family she comes from, she has had little help there as well. I have family members who think these behaviors are funny and they are sixty-year-old men. I also have a family member with no filter who says whatever is on their mind no matter the situation, and she is 40. These are/were my daughter’s family role-models, and as much as I try to be irreverent, sophisticated and exemplar, my mouth can get me in a heap of trouble too. Nathan and I have a tendency to discuss things and people we should not in her close proximity or presence, and we need to fix it, but that is easier said than done.

But this all leads me back to my recent daily mantra, you can’t go back. I will never be able to get these moments back, I will never be able to go back and do my daughter’s life over, so I am trying now to do things as right as I possibly can. So, Nathan and I asked for Nitalia to be moved into the kindergarten at her current school. She was unhappy with the decision at first, but she is also a logical kid. After explaining to her that she would still see the kids she knows on the playground and that she could still invite those girls she loves to her birthday party, she conceded that kindergarten sounded like a good place for her. Literally, as we were driving in the car a while after Nathan and I had spoken to her about the possible change she said, “Mommy, I have had some time to think about it, and kindergarten sounds like the right place for me.”

What always confounds me about Nitalia is her ability to rise to my level in conversation and then sink to the lowest possible level in her classes. She always seems to make friends with the boy or girl with outright behavioral problems. She always talks to me about the girls she befriends and they sound so bossy. Hmmmm, the realization that likes attract each other scares me to death, so can we all just pretend that this is not the case. I like to think that she befriends these kids out of the goodness of her heart, because she knows they will be social outcasts and wants to help them overcome their personal flaws. Not until now did I ever entertain the thought that she is drawn to kids whom are like her.

Dear God, please let this not be the case.

We meet with the some type of learning committee on Monday morning to finalize her move to kindergarten, and from there I hope it will be smoother sailing. Do I feel like a failure and as though I gave up, yes. But I also feel as though I have done what is in the best interest of my child, who will not be 6 for another three weeks and would continue to be the youngest in her class had I left her where she was. My hope is that now she can go into kindergarten as a leader with skills that will help her feel successful. That is my hope.