Gearhead Mom

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Time for Kindergarten, Baby

Posted by Jenny M. @ 4:02 AM

My two-year-old daughter has joined her elder sister at the local preschool this month.  It’s our soon-to-be-kindergartener’s last weeks of preschool and she’s been able to help her little sister with the transition into her old school before she moves on.  Today is their last day in school together.  Last day in the same class.  Probably forever.  Unless they take the same elective in high school. 

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I’m having a hard time with this, because the transition to kindergarten is about more than starting Real School.  My daughters are Day Care kids.  With two full-time working parents, they’ve been in full-day daycare and preschool from infancy.  But we’ve managed to keep them together several days a week, and my husband’s Mondays off have made those days special ones for sisterhood and for Daddy Time.  Kindergarten means no more Daddy Weekdays.  No more arbitrary stay-at-home days.  No more sisters-together days.  I’m sad about all this, but I am trying not to project nostalgia, nor anxiety, onto my five-year old.  And she seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.
Nevertheless, it helps to have gentle resources that open discussion and remind us that while change can be difficult, everything is manageable when we love and support one another.  Missy sent my daughter a copy of The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn as a pre-kindergarten/birthday present, and she just lapped it right up.  In this sweet little tale, Chester Raccoon is preparing to start (night) school (duh, he’s nocturnal!) and his mother talks him through his fears.  She kisses his hand and he can feel the kiss “rush from his hand, up his arm, and into his heart.”  When I got to this part of the book, my daughter clutched her chest and nodded and whispered, “I can already feel it, Mama!” 
Yep, I am pretty sure I felt my heart melt right then, too. 
The book is providing me, and my daughter, some “toasty warm thoughts” as we leap another developmental hurdle.
P.S.  The book comes with bonus “The Kissing Hand” heart stickers, which I snatched up and told my daughter she might find in her lunchbox now and again, reminding her we love her and are thinking about her all day long.

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