She's so Tiny!

Aww, aren't they pretty?  Whenever Apple has someone over to play, there are many, many wardrobe changes.  It's kind of funny to have little girls other than mine streaking through the house in their underoos.   Strawberry and her friends used to do it more, but the Wii tends to take up most of the time now.

So over the past week, a new dilemma has presented itself.  Apple is 4 and will turn 5 in November.  I've always just assumed that she would have to wait to start Kindergarten until next year, when she was 5 going on 6.  But here in California, the cut off date is December.  I knew that and planned to ignore it, but I'm not so sure anymore. Apple's stinking preschool teachers have been teaching her stuff!  :)  I went to her parent-teacher conference and it was nice to hear all about how amazing my little girl is.  She has really enjoyed it and I've been impressed by her progress.  But her teacher said that if we felt that she was ready, she could totally do fine in Kindergarten.  She said there were pros and cons either way and that we'd have to really figure out what we felt was important, but that it was something to consider.

And so I have started to pay attention and I've been sort of astonished at where Apple is now compared to 9 months ago when she started.  She is sitting right next to me going through the alphabet and the sounds they say and words that start with them.  She can write really really well.  She has started writing notes all the time and the other day, she came in and asked me to write down the baby's name so she could copy it.  She's been copying for a while really well, but I wanted to see if she really did know the letters, so I just spelled it out for her and she wrote them all perfectly with no help.  It has really come as a shock because the past year has flown by with the new baby and the deployment and I swear it was just last week that I was having to hold her hand and do all the writing when she had to sign her name at preschool.  This is just a different kid.  She is much further along than Strawberry when she started school.  I have a friend whose son is in Kindergarten and she showed me the list of all the things that the kids are supposed to learn during the year, and she has already mastered over half of it.  And my friend has noticed that some of the kids who were in the same position as Apple, and whose parents decided to have them wait, are actually struggling a little bit with behavior because they are bored.

So all of the sudden, there are these different aspects to consider that I hadn't before.  And another thing about Apple is that she is kind of tricky.  See that picture at the top?  That's our little neighbor who is 3 and a half and she is actually a little bigger than Apple.  There is another little friend of hers who is almost an entire year younger and he is definitely bigger.  Apple is in the 10th percentile for height and weight, according to a doctor visit from last year.  She is tiny and so one naturally assumes she is younger than she is. I even do.  And the fact that she has a big sister to contrast with also makes me think of her as younger.  At the same time though, 4 is really young to start Kindergarten, no matter how big you are.

We had the same problem with Strawberry, but not quite as bad.  Her birthday is two months earlier than Apple's, but she was still right at the deadline.  Why do I have all of these autumn babies?!?  If they were spring babies, this would be much easier.  I agonized over whether or not to start Kindergarten and I was so worried that I had made the wrong choice, but now, I really think that I made the right one.  She fits in with the 2nd graders.  She likes to play with 1st graders, but academically, she is really doing well and tends to be in the top of her class.  I think that in her case, if she was the oldest in class, she would be bored.

But is boredom reason enough?  Isn't that something that I can deal with by offering support at home?  But is that something that I can offer?  I realized over the past couple of weeks that I was neglecting poor Strawberry and that is one of the reasons that she was having problems at school.  I wasn't offering her that support. She hadn't needed it in 1st grade because she had an awesome teacher.  And then we moved here and I had a baby and my husband was gone all the time and I left Strawberry to her own devices, knowing that she had done amazing before. But I didn't take into account the fact that Mrs. S had been awesome and Mrs. C isn't quite.  Not that she is a bad teacher, but she just doesn't fit Strawberry.  And so Strawberry needed that support and I wasn't giving it.  But since I have been, she has been absolutely blossoming.

So little Apple is in this position where she is going to need support either way.  So am I better at giving emotional support or cognitive support?  If she starts Kindergarten this year, she will do fine cognitively and will be challenged, but will maybe struggle emotionally because of her immaturity (although I think that she won't be all that different from the other kids).  If she waits until next year, she will be more emotionally mature, but will most likely be bored as she will probably have mastered all of the things they learn in Kindergarten.

And that's not all there is to consider.  If she starts now, she will be 17 when she graduates and won't turn 18 until the following November.  I am not sending a 17 year old off to college.  (Of course, Strawberry won't turn 18 until September--is that all that much better?)  She won't be able to drive or date until she is a Junior.  She will be younger than all her friends.  She'll always be the littlest in class.  On the other hand, she won't drive or date until she is a Junior.  :)  She and Strawberry would be closer together in school.  I will know that she is being challenged.  That is kind of a big one for me because I was bored out of my mind in elementary school.  I would beg my teachers for homework in 2nd grade.  Our school didn't offer much as far as gifted programs, and the programs in middle school and Jr. High were a joke.  But at the same time, did that matter in the long run?  I don't know.  It didn't lead me to bad behavior.  And it was a help to my parents, I'm sure, because they didn't have to help me much with homework and stuff.  And it didn't teach me to be a quitter when things got hard.  All those things that they warn could happen when kids are bored didn't happen to me.  And my kids have the same genes.  :)

I don't know.  Right now I'm going to go ahead and register her and then spend the next three months driving myself crazy trying to figure out what to do.  Luke says to go for it.  It makes me crazy how easy decision making is for him.  Maybe he understands better than I do that there isn't necessarily a "right" thing to do and that you just have to weigh the options, make a decisions, and then stick to it and make the most of it.  Or he is delusional.  He says that we can solve the 17-year-old college student thing by touring Europe as a family instead.  He is retiring that year.  :)  But we really are kind of different about decision making.  It took me 2 or 3 months to buy a car.  It took him 2 days.  I totally have buyer's regret now.  I should have got the Mazda 5!  The Odyssey is too big.  I'm wasting space!  I have this really weird issue with wasting space.  When we lived in Mesa, we had a pretty big house and it drove me crazy because we were using more room than we should have been.  I felt like we were going to a barbecue and taking 2 hamburgers when there were only enough hamburgers for everyone to have one.  That's exactly how I feel about the car.  One of my neuroses.