Kindergarten is a huge year. It’s the first year that every parent has to figure out schooling for their kid. At least in the US, you have to have a solution for schooling your kid starting in kindergarten.
I assumed that for us – this was going to be business as usual.
At 6, Augustine has already gone through daycare, 3 years of preschool and a year of Montessori. I kinda thought we were rolling into Kinder as old pros, there to help those few parents who have ‘never said goodbye’ to their kids before. Instead, I routinely found myself edging my way into conversations by the actual experienced parents (the ones with older kids).
This year, especially the first few months, these seasoned elementary veterans reached guru status. But, not in the raising kids is hard way. No, these parents knew the ins-and-outs of ‘the system’.
These were the parents who understood what the Fun Run was really about or get Room-Parent ideas and exactly how many absences triggered the front office. They weren’t perfect – they forgot folders and sprinted from their car to beat the bell – but they were super necessary to understanding what Elementary School is/was all about…
…except, our class didn’t really have any of these Sage Parents, so we had to rely on second hand info passed through the most outgoing and/or connected parents in our group…
Looking back now, we did a commendable job navigating Augustine’s Kindergarten. See, we went in thinking we were in a river, and it turned out that we were in a canal – where we’d BANG into the hard walls of its lock-system on occasion. Sure, at the time these hard stops felt like the end-of-the-world, but really they were just something to work our way through.
Here are the 10 things I learned from My Daughter’s First Year of Kindergarten…and I hope they prepare you in a way that I was not prepared at all.
- You’re Not In Control
I feel like this is these scene where the drill instructor calls every ‘snowflake’ and insults their Mom.
See, the school works the way the school works, and it isn’t intended to cater to any one individual family. You have to make yourself and your kid fit into the school’s way of doing things.
I hated this.
Not that I require special attention or pampering, but I do (or did) expect some customization options. Well, there are some options but it’s less of a smorgasbord (ie the Starbucks drink menu) and more like a Cafe (ie Coffee or No Coffee).
Many of our issues and questions had quick, prewritten answers – like a FAQ page. If we pushed further, we really only got a more elaborate wording of the same answer – not a personalized exception to the rules or practices.
That’s not to say that the teachers and staff didn’t care about our issues, but there is only so much that a couple of people overseeing 30 kids at a time or 700 kids a day can do.
- Your Kid’s Teacher Has Their Own Style & That’s How It’s Gonna Work
This pairs well with the first note, but is much more important to understand:
Your kid’s teacher is most likely a school veteran who has honed their style of getting through their work over many, many years. The way they act, they way they communicate ideas with your kid – that’s their best possible answer to the question ‘how do I best teach kids’. You (1 random parent they have to deal with for 1 random year) are not going to significantly change the way they approach their job.
All in all, this truism makes me think back to my sister’s 4th Grade teacher. She was the kind of teacher that, as a kid, you thought was sorta mean, but, as an adult, you realize she was really mean and probably a bad person. My parents had numerous parent-teacher-conferences with her to try and iron things out, but nothing major changed. Knowing what I know now – I’m not surprised that the teacher continued to be horrible for the rest of the year. She’d developed her system and one year teaching my sister wasn’t going to change her decades of experience.
If you have a problem with the teacher, you have to find a way for your kid and you to adapt and thrive within their unique rule system or you have switch classes.
- Everything is Incentivized
Maybe you luck out and it’s not, but most regular schools lean into some sort of prize box or reward system for a number of things – school work, good attitudes, helping out in the classroom. This was a bit of a shock to us at first since we don’t have an at-home reward system of any kind. It also sorta changed Augustine’s idea of ‘rewards’ for a few weeks, but we found this to be pretty isolated.
We also have found that the prize-box hasn’t become an end unto itself. Augustine likes learning and doing school work, she isn’t just doing it for the prizes – they’re just a bonus. If anything, they’ve actually become most beneficial in getting kids to participate in the dress-up days – which is nice as a parent to not have to force your kids to dress up like David Bowie, they want to.
- No One Know What to Give a Teacher
I’m gonna be honest, I thought we were alone on this one until another Mom burst out that she was confused by how much to donate to a teacher, and that she feels like she’s gifting herself into the poor house.
When you google it, most of the suggested donation amount range around $25 is seems, but this feels pretty disproportionate. I mean, in a classroom of 30 kids, in total you’re gifting $750. While this is great for the teacher, that’s (wow)…that’s a big give.
We live in an affluent area where this blog happened to cite a parent from near us saying “the average is $50 to $100 per parent toward a gift card”. Well, we happened to donate $50 this last gifting round – brining the total for 22 kids up to $350…so, I’m not sure this mom is correct.
I think you have to think about your gifting throughout the year. How much total are you gifting the teacher and how much are you gifting the classroom. And, for the teacher specifically, remember – this is a gift, it’s not supposed to be some sort of teacher-income-substitution.
- Grade School is Co-Parenting with Every Parent in the Class
Almost as soon as we started doing playdates in preschool, we had to start telling Augustine, ‘Not every family does things they way we do. So, you have to play by their ‘house rules’ when you’re in someone else’s home’
Look, I can say that to my kid because words are cheap. It’s harder for me when I’m standing across from a parent that is preaching about how Santa Claus is dangerous or how Disney’s Seeing Red is a transgressive film.
No matter what your parental ideology is, there are going to be a handful of parents that are more liberal, more conservative & more prone to join a cult than you are. Unfortunately, you can’t just walk away from these people. Their kids are next to your kids all day long – which means the ideology from these random parents is rubbing onto your kid all day long.
How is this going to impact your day-to-day :: Ultimately what this means is that all the random questions and life problems that you are personally struggling to solve and have kinda punted down the road as far as explaining to your kid – they are going to come up. Just expect it.
You’re going to get questions about God, Fairies, white holes (which apparently are like black holes but the opposite) and the death of steerage passengers on the Titanic. Maybe worse, you’re going to get these questions third hand – full of distortions and random kid-brain inference (like white holes that spit everything back into space – where does that stuff go?)
We’ve all had fruitless and infuriating political conversations over the past few years, so I don’t have to underline the fact that you aren’t going to change anyone’s mind or parenting style. (Like I’ve tried to explain Santa to Claus-Haters and even though I can reach them on an intellectual level, I’ve never changed anyone’s mind.)
Instead, what we do is lightly explain to Augustine what we’ve said before – every family is different. Then we lean hard into our true beliefs. This is where being honest with you kid really pays off, because keeping up with half-truths and white-lies at 100mph gets impossible). Luckily, we’ve been honest with Augustine up to now and can support our ideas at times when her friends are teaching her differently.
Now, this doesn’t matter – Augustine regularly tells us that her friends (especially this one kid Jonah – the Kinder expert on theoretical space phenomenon) are smarter than us. But, what it does do is show Augustine that what we’ve said before is grounded in more than just a surface-level blanket statement. Our ideas and beliefs have depth and are things we can discuss at length…and then after explaining all the things we know and belive, we can acquiesce that white holes must exist.
- These Families Are the Childhood Families
Most likely, these kids and their parents are going to be alongside you for the next 12 years. (The Moms here say ‘these are our people’) Even though your kids might not be friends or are friends but might not be later, the parents and the relationships you have with them are a network to utilize throughout your kid’s life. Getting to know the other kids now and letting them get to know you, is your best preparation of problem solving in Middle School and High School. (It’s the way that you can literally call the parent of the kid harassing your own kid in 8th grade…well, text them, we’re not psycho.)
- Being an Active Parent is the Way to Go
This holds true on two levels…volunteering at the school and meeting the other parents.
- Volunteering – There are two benefits to volunteering:
- At least in my experience, volunteering at the school actually enables the kids to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise get to do. (Like being the ‘gardening volunteer’ – kids wouldn’t garden without someone being like – ‘I can keep the kids busy for 15-20 mins’) It’s a moot point to say ‘art has been taken out of school’ anymore – that’s just reality now. Volunteering though puts that back in the schools, and it’s different that doing it at home with your kid. Your kid, my daughter at least, learns differently and takes different risks around her friends and peer group than at home – so you’re most likely getting more bang for your buck showing her stuff at school than at home.
- Social Credit and Recognition – If you have a problem with the school or you need assistance from the administrative staff, well, if you’ve volunteered, you aren’t just some crazy parent sending an email. You become the guy/girl who planted the seeds or helped out at the bounce house. There are so few ways to gain social credit within the school staff – take advantage where you can.
- Meeting other Parents – We were the instigators that had the party, that started the conversation, that tried really hard to remember everyone’s name. Given a few weeks, it’s easy enough to develop ‘wave hello’ friendships with a few of the other parents, but that’s essentially meaningless. We know more about what Augustine is going through, can help address problems, and help her friend group prosper because we actively went outside our comfort zone any time other parents were around. (Remember, these families and their good and bad kids probably aren’t going away, meet them now when its easy).
Also, being actively engaged with the peer group, instigating play dates and parties, they enrich the social experience for your kids.
We’re batting about 40% at gaining friendships from acquaintances. I feel like that’s pretty good. But even if the percentage was lower – it’s better to be the person to say hi than the parent no one really knows.
- As for a real world example : Augustine did two extracurricular activities this spring, softball and ballet. She wants to do softball again and ditch ballet. A large part of this is because we actively reached out and engaged with the other parents and made the softball into a team of friends rather than a group we saw once a week.
- There are different Gender Expectations from Parents
If I had any doubt that we lived in a post ‘Mom raises the kids’ world, this year showed me that we we defiantly still live in a parentally segregated society. (I just want to point out that actually, a lot of the mom’s around us work too, so it’s not that we live near a bunch of yuppy single-income households).
As a Dad, being present, showing up, volunteering at a school puts you on a pedestal equivalent to maybe not saving the world but definately hitting the winning home run for the home town team. Dad’s need to take advantage of this.
Having this antiquated parent-contribution metric overly-weighted in favor of Dad means that by doing very little – we make a huge impact. Going into school and helping is like Superman showing up, and so the ideals and attitude we exude and convey at those times also disproportionately impacts kids…which could be a great thing.
*Side note : I’m also personally really invested in normalizing kid-adult relationships and making sure the kids I’m around are comfortable talking to me, questioning me and asking for help. So being present in the classroom helps foster this sort of open relationship ideology.
- Keep an Eye Out for Regression
Even coming from preschool, kindergarten is most likely a new school with new rules. For us, even accounting for Covid, going to a dedicated Elementary school for the first time was more hands-off than we’d been in any other school. Your Kinder kid is going to be their most independent.
Going through this transition, you might see some regression to things you though were in the past.
For us, bladder control was and is an issue that we’re having to figure out. What’s new this go-round, Augustine is hiding it. So we’ve had to be very forward about figuring out if she is having accidents and what is and is not working to solve them. We’ve had to be the instigator – noticing the small changes and actively pursuing the solution.
10) It’s takes a full year to really see how all the pieces fit together
When you sign up for school, you get a general break-down of key dates throughout the year. Then, monthly and/or weekly you’ll get more details about important events or themed days. You still aren’t going to have any idea about what’s really going on or what any of this stuff actually is.
It’s not until you’ve gone through one full school year that you understand how everything fits together and can accurately access where the school excels and where it needs help. Also, you aren’t really going to understand what any event is or what to get excited about until you’ve seen it all and can look at each thing as a whole.
I think this is because everyone doing putting on the events has already been through it multiple years, so the small details of what things actually mean are overlooked because they’re just ‘part of the experience’ to everyone who’s not new.
Get through Kindergarten, meet people, talk to the teacher’s and staff. Learn the school’s system, then you’ll come in prepared to really excel in 1st Grade. (I hope, I mean, I don’t know).