Starting Kindergarten

September 25th, 2011. Published under fave books, parenting. 6 Comments.

My daughter seems to be well-adjusted now. A month ago, she didn’t want to go to school. When we were out shopping for uniforms, she refused to try the ones I had picked out for her. She whined that she misses her bestfriend, Catalina. She wanted to stay in preschool with her friends and her beloved teacher, Ms. Ana. No amount of explanation could ease her anxiety.

I started to worry. I had thought that adjusting to kindergarten would be a breeze for her. Afterall, she’s used to the school setting. She’s comfortable with other kids. She’s mastered her alphabet, colors, and shapes. She can count up to 100, write her name, spell and recognize some words. I didn’t understand why, just a few days before the start of classes, she acted skittish whenever I mentioned anything related to kindergarten.

So I hunted all over the house for a book that I had bought two years ago. I didn’t think she’d need it anymore after I saw how excellent she was doing in preschool. How could I have forgotten that it is but natural for anybody to feel anxious whenever there’s a big change coming up? New place. New faces. New routines. I should have prepared her emotionally.

I called her to come sit beside me on the couch. Together we examined “The Night Before Kindergarten” by Julie Durrell and Natasha Wing. I read it aloud. Hmmmm. It rhymed and sounded like the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. That’s a plus. My daughter is a little Dr. Seuss, fond of creating rhyming gibberish. With the help of the book I assured her that, in some ways, kindergarten is just like preschool. I pointed at the pictures that showed  what they might do and what she may see in the classroom. What caught her attention the most was the line “visions of school supplies danced in their heads”. One by one she identified them on the page. I seized that spark of interest and declared that we should start gathering the coolest stuff we could find for school. She ran to her pencil holder and pulled out some pink pencils. We sharpened them up until their tips felt like bee stings against our skin. She picked out a pineapple eraser from her eraser collection. She agonized over whether she should get her dad to buy her the sparkly pink backpack or the Disney Princesses one. The princesses won. We went on a trip to the dollar store to get her a pencil box. I kept reminding her that the small box will not hold all her crayons, markers, pencils, and colored pencils. While rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, she explained   that she needed to pack some snacks for recess.  After she found some crackers, she positioned her backpack the by door, just like in the book, all set for the first day of school.