Today Nathaniel and Serena were registered for public school. That this feels like a big deal to me is probably evidence that I’m still holding some ambivalence despite my positive feelings about the decision. But after we found the district’s office, hidden and signless in a corner of the brand-new high school next to the brand-new middle school Nathaniel will be attending, to be sat down by a humorless administrative drone who looked remarkably like this one and surrendered a lot of paperwork, I found the feeling to be somewhat anti-climactic.
For the rest of the day I found myself saying things to the children like, “Well! You’re registered for public school now!”
Coincidentally, today was the first time a neighborhood kid rang the bell and asked if one of the occupants could play. It was Dylan, a 6th-grader like Nathaniel, a head shorter than Nathaniel and a couple years more worldly, but a nice kid who Nathaniel and Serena have been hanging out with outside a few times in the past couple of weeks. He came in to see the cats and ended up staying for dinner even after I showed him what it was (brown rice curry with spinach, garlic, and tofu), though he didn’t seem to be hungry, poor kid.
He referred to me as “Yes, ma’am!”, and while I understood it was likely ingrained in him since infancy (military parents) I still wanted to slap him after about the 37th time he said it. His bravado faded a little when he talked about his family, 4 adults and four kids living under the same-sized roof as ours. I wanted to hug him and promise him a trip to the art museum (he likes to draw and even drew me a picture but has never been in a museum) and tell him he’s welcome here any time. Nathaniel has never had a neighborhood friend before and has only had a few orchestrated playdates with school friends who lived far away.
So was it coincidental that on the very day I was questioning my decision to take the kids out of their school and put them into a brand-new situation, one fraught with detritus from No Child Left Behind and bunches of tough kids who are exposed to a whole lot of things mine have yet to imagine, a friend shows up on the doorstep?
Nah.
[tags]kids, neighborhoods, neighborhood kids, school, public school, Waldorf school[/tags]
August 31st, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Oh, cool, so now he has a friend even before starting school! That always makes such a difference. I wish we had that sort of neighborhood, but ours is full of the kind of girls who play with Bratz and wear miniskirts and steal your stuff (aka my husband’s basketball out of our storage thingy). So we don’t hang out with them.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:26 pm
don’t even get me started on no child fucking left behind… meanwhile, good for you for trying out the new schools for your kiddios. i’m sure all will be well.