Operation Kindergarten Readiness

I saw this on the internet, 71? Really? I was too scared to click on the link. Pray for me, Ellamae is going to kindergarten this fall. She is my fourth child to make this transition, so you'd think I'd be a pro at it by now. Not so much. In the spring, she went to a kindergarten assessment where they went over basic reading and math skills. After the assessment the teacher gave us her summer packet and gently let me know that she was behind in her letter recognition skills, very behind.

Pause for a moment of intense internal panic followed by a healthy dose of mom guilt.

The teacher recommended a video that would help her learn her letters in a fun way which I bought from my phone while I was still in the parking lot of the school in digital and DVD format. Then, I called her Dad in the middle of his work day to tell him what the teacher said and I sent him a link to the video so he could purchase it and download it (immediately) to his devices for her to watch during her weekends with him. When I got home, which is about four minutes from the school, I ordered not one, not two, but six kindergarten readiness workbooks, a letter tracing workbook, erasable write on alphabet flashcards, an alphabet card game, and an alphabet puzzle. Within ten minutes of learning that Ellamae was behind in letters, a plan of action was in place and ready to commence in a guaranteed two days thanks to Amazon Prime.

Operation Kindergarten Readiness is a go. Roger that.

Turns out the video was awful. To call it a painful hour and a half of letter teaching torture is not an exaggeration, if anything, it's a gross understatement. I had to turn it off a little over halfway through to save both Ellamae's and my own sanity. She likes doing her workbooks and the idea of having her own "homework" like the big kids. But she doesn't really like the letter pages as much as she enjoys the pre-writing and math activities. Absolutely zero interest in the write on flashcards, which I thought she would enjoy just for the dry erase marker alone. And the puzzle, meh. She'll do it, if I make her, but Flower Tower and Moana are still her puzzles of choice.

Mayday, mayday, we're going down! Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission!

It is true, if you lined up 100 kindergarteners and charted their abilities on a bell curve, Ellamae would be to the left of the standard deviation, apparently, to the far left. But therein lies the problem. Even at 5 years old, and probably even earlier if we're honest with ourselves, we are teaching our kids to measure their own worth in comparison to others. And it's such a damaging practice. Comparing ourselves to others can lead to feelings of inadequacy and discontent. It distracts us from celebrating the beauty of our own lives because we are constantly looking at others and how they're living their lives, or more accurately, our perception of how they're living their lives.

Just think about how voyeuristic social media can be. We spend so much time looking at how others are presenting their lives to be which in turn creates a need for us to take an everyday moment and glamorize it to post on social media - ummmmm, guilty as charged. Yesterday I posted a picture of Ellamae and I having smoothies at Smoothie King. It took three tries to get a picture of her simultaneously smiling and looking at the camera, with the Smoothie King logo on her cup showing just enough so people were sure to see where we were, but angled enough so it didn't look contrived. Yup. That's my version of people who arrange their coffee mugs and books just so with the caption "peaceful morning", or toe pictures at the beach because no matter what our body shape, toes with nail polish are always cute, and even cuter with sunshine and blue waters in the background. We all know the tricks to make our ordinary lives social media worthy. And all that pretending and comparing just keeps spinning on and on, perpetuating the practice of finding our self-worth in relation to others.

So what if during the summer before her kindergarten year she doesn't know as many letters as her cohorts? She is a smart kid. I've seen it. And I know she will learn this year, and the next, and the next. Does she have way too much screen time? A resounding yes. Did I spend as much time with her working on her letters as I could have? No. We spent our time playing with Barbies and Shopkins and Calico Critters and watching The Nightmare Before Christmas ad nauseum. Was she happy in those moments, did she feel loved and know that her version of quality time was important to me? Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Was that worth a few points to the left on the bell curve? I am trusting my mom instincts that it was.

Seven years ago when Lauren was getting ready for Kindergarten, I wrote a post and nowhere in it did I mention kindergarten readiness, pre-reading skills, or letter recognition. I think it's because she didn't have a kindergarten assessment and I didn't know where she stood in comparison to her peers. Instead of worrying, or creating kindergarten boot camp for her, we spent our last days of just Mom and Lauren going to the local coffee shop every Wednesday for pink iced S cookies. Fast forward to Ellamae's last few days before her school career, and I almost let the comparison to her peers rob of us of that special time when it's just the two of us and she still sees me as the center of her world. These are precious moments, and I almost passed them by.

I don't know how her cohorts are spending their summers. But as for us, when she wants to do her "homework", we do. And when she's done, we're done. And when she wants to go to the pool, we go. And when she wants to snuggle, boy, do we snuggle.

Operation Love that Kid for Who She Is in full effect.

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