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MOD MOM: Pre-school doesn’t have to rule
Just the other day, it seems, teething, sleeping through the night and starting solid foods were the worries consuming me. Two years later and the real pressure is on: to pre-school or not.
At age 2, I didn’t expect so many of Ava’s peers to begin preschool, but that’s just what’s happened this fall. For the past several weeks, all the mommy talk is about preschool — how everyone is adapting, the right age to start preschool, the best schools, the waiting lists.
Ava is fascinated by her friends’ tales of getting to use “real scissors” and envious of their cool new backpacks. When her friend told her he was starting school, Ava’s response was, “You going to school? Whoaaa.”
As for me, well, I’ve avoided leaving the house when school is starting or letting out, simply to avoid hearing Ava’s screeching “There’s a school bus!” every 5 seconds.
Pre-school sounds exciting and fun and I’m sure Ava would enjoy it. But, my husband and I haven’t found any convincing reason for her to begin school just yet.
First of all, I’m fortunate enough to have a flexible, work-from-home schedule, allowing me to spend most of my time with my daughter. We are involved in a very active mom’s group that visits the Science Center, the Zoo, museums, we made pizzas the other day, we visit farms and learn how to plant seeds, we’re going to play soccer and see a play next month. Ava is in classes, like swimming and gymnastics, where she learns to stand in line, wait her turn and listen to the teacher.
She gets plenty of playtime with her friends at the playground or on outings several times a week, and she’s a very independent child who does just fine when mommy’s not around. I stayed home with my mom until kindergarten and the day I started I waved good-bye and never looked back. Anyone that knows Ava can tell you it’s a sure thing she’ll have the same attitude (the “me do myself” attitude is something the girl certainly knows right now.)
Ava knows her ABC’s and recognizes all the letters, as well as her own name, can count to 20 and recognizes numbers 1-10 and is beginning to learn simple math. She knows most of her shapes and colors. We read books and sing songs every day; some days we paint and do crafts. She can follow directions, sit still for story time and solve simple problems.
In other words, what is she going to get out of preschool that she’s not getting at home?
Don’t misunderstand me — I think preschool is a great choice, but it is a choice.
That idea seems lost on many of our friends and family; even mere acquaintances seem to have an opinion. People tend to either become defensive about why they’re sending their children to preschool, warn me that I’m setting my daughter up to fail or just become uncomfortable and change the subject. Most of them just look at me like I’m crazy.
There are many reasons I might have changed my mind about pre-school — if I felt Ava was too clingy, wasn’t reaching developmental milestones, didn’t interact well with other children, didn’t listen to other adults and behave appropriately, for example.
And up until recently, I hadn’t given the subject much thought. I figured Ava would go to pre-school, as is customary. With the time here, though, it just doesn’t sit right with me.
I started considering my alternatives. Why couldn’t I teach her at home? It’s basically what I’ve been doing all along — we name the vegetables and their colors in the grocery store, we put ABC puzzles together on the living room floor, we read books about learning our emotions and play the piano.
So my research into the preschool vs. home school preschool began. What I’ve found makes me comfortable in my decision.
Still, for all the reports and anecdotal evidence in favor or home schooling during the pre-school years, there are just as many others that insist preschool is now a necessary component of educational success.
Fortunately, I’m finally comfortable enough in my motherhood to do what mom’s do best, trust my instincts.
And my instincts say teaching my daughter at home is right for us, for right now.
Lisa Hurt Kozarovich is a freelance journalist and can be reached via e-mail at Lisakozar@hotmail.com.
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BAYLOR: Dear Pat
“I can’t help but wonder if we’ve made a mistake in settling down in New Albany. This place is nuts.”
The words quoted above are real. I didn’t make them up. They were spoken to me by a friend who wasn’t raised here, like you and I were, you in the city, and me in the county.
Perhaps neither of us is able to see the counter-productive political dysfunction holding sway hereabouts quite as clearly as someone who views our home turf with clear, unprejudiced eyes — the type of person far too many natives persist in dismissing and deriding as an “outsider.”
Pat, we don’t know each other that well, and during the time since you were elected to represent the 4th council district, we’ve had a few heated debates over politics, policy and public affairs. Let’s forget those. The reason why I’m writing you today is because of my friend, who came here from somewhere else because he and his wife believe in our city’s largely untapped potential. In spite of our differences, Pat, it’s always been my view that at some level, you genuinely “get it.”
As such, what are we to tell my friend — tell him, and her, and “them people,” as your caterwauling council colleague Dan Coffey has oft times referred to anyone who is educated, artistic, productive and capable? Are we to follow Coffey’s lead and turn away the new blood — the sort of people that any community needs to build, grow and prosper — or shall we harness, integrate and welcome them to a city that values their presence and benefits from their labors?
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, Pat. It isn’t about newcomers alone. It’s about those who already live here — most importantly, about their children. It’s a cliché, but children are the city’s hope and its future. In the past, our best and brightest tended to leave town, because we couldn’t offer the sort of economic, cultural and lifestyle opportunities they regarded as necessary to stay. This needs to change, and in some respects, it has.
Surely we can agree: When it comes to education and educational opportunities, that selfishness, resentment and spite have no conceivable place in the discussion.
And yet, Pat, since you’ve served on the city council, can unbiased, neutral observers reach any other conclusion than this one:
New Albany’s city council, as permitted by its members to be dominated by a regressive, anti-intellectual faction led by Dan Coffey and abetted by Steve Price, has consistently stood against education, and educational attainment, and sustainable economic development flowing as a natural consequence of education?
I’m trying earnestly not to exaggerate the Coffey-led council’s anti-educational bias, which in practice might better be referred to as an aversion to human progress in virtually any quantifiable form, except you and I both know the malignancy is there, and profoundly damaging.
My question to you, Pat: If you know better, and I think you do, then why, at this late juncture, is your name so closely linked politically with theirs?
Consider last week’s tragicomic school closings. If ever there were a time for this pointlessly fractured, hopelessly divided council (and that’s just the eight strong Democratic contingent) to come together, call a special town hall meeting, posture, grandstand, point fingers and squawk, this was it: Neighborhood schools being closed in three downtown council districts, hampering if not outright crippling revitalization prospects and economic development for decades to come.
Predictably, none of it occurred. As a body, the council was silent, and the only way to explain its timidity is outright malice on the part of its movers and shakers. City Hall came out forcefully against the school closings, and almost certainly, that’s why the Coffey-Price “let’s pretend to be Democrats and hope that we all fail” faction refrained from comment.
That they fail as individuals to see any value in progress merely seals the deal on their crass political absenteeism. Either way, it’s another black eye for a city already ill disposed toward insight.
Understood: Times are hard. The business climate is tough, and yet quite a few people, many of them from elsewhere, have invested in downtown New Albany. To cite one example, the new State Street branch of Wick’s Pizza has been its best performing store in metro Louisville. Wick’s is situated in Coffey’s council district, and yet he hasn’t missed an opportunity to speak and act against such development, to bad-mouth entrepreneurs, and to urge future investors to stay away from New Albany.
Pat, is this really leadership?
(No, Roger, it isn’t.)
I know you believe that. I know you’re better than that. I know you have what it takes to lead. But Pat, here’s what bothers me.
Why do you tolerate it, and why do you persist in voting with Coffey and Price?
Sorry, no; you can’t explain it by saying that the issues upon which you’ve been marching lockstep with the council’s ward heeling looters — sewer rate votes, audit envy, public safety and dollar-and-cents issues —are somehow different in nature from the spiteful, repugnant, self-debilitating attitude toward the city’s future displayed by these same congenital “no” voters. The non-governing principles prefacing book burning and tea parties are exactly the same.
Pat, it’s eloquently simple even though it’s excruciatingly hard.
When the time finally comes for last call — not a quick pint before the trip home from the warm pub on a cold, desperate and anonymous night just like all the rest, but the punching of the big ticket and the cosmic bow prior to that most irrevocable of all curtains falling, how will posterity judge your political legacy?
Was it progressive or regressive?
Was it Dan Coffey’s legacy … or yours? -
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