Kindergarten here we come!

For some moms, sending a child off to kindergarten is a liberating experience. Who can blame them? The first five years of a child's life bring hours and hours of feeding, changing, bathing, training, teaching, reading, playing, entertaining, etc. I get tired just thinking about it. Oh wait, I'm already tired because I'm still doing it.

For others, the first day of kindergarten is a day faced with trepidation, a moment where a mom wonders if she has prepared her child adequately for the challenges he/she faces in the "real world". (So maybe it's a bit of a stretch to qualify elementary school as the real world, but still, you catch my drift)

I find myself somewhere in between the two. I look forward to having a few hours a day without my oldest child, but not because I need a break from her. I just want a bit of uninterrupted time with my other children, attention that Anna qualified for simply by coming into the world before they did. She wasn't however, born into this world with an overwhelming amount of self-confidence, a trait that a mother can only do so much to instill. For that reason, I worry that when Johnny from school criticizes her drawing, or Sally laughs while she's reading aloud, the damage will be near-irreparable.

What's a mom to do?

Last week I traveled to the local elementary school to register Anna for kindergarten. After bounding out to the car with the energy of a chimp, her excitement ended as soon as we hit the school boundaries. Her other self surfaced. The rigidly shy, I-won't-open-my-mouth-to-talk-to-someone-I've-never-met-before-for-a-million-dollars self. As we traveled from station to station, her mouth clamped shut, her small figure clinging to my side, I increasingly dreaded the moment when she would be given a basic skills test. Very simple. Write your name. Say your ABC's. Count to 10. Name these colors. Cut out this picture. Hop on one foot. Draw these shapes.

Sure enough, she exceeded my wildest expectations. In a bad way, that is. Not only did Anna cower in timidness, I watched her spirit deteriorate with each prompting we gave her. She was using every ounce of energy she had just to keep the tears in. I saw her face wrenched with emotional agony and asked the kind teacher who was administering the test what is usually done in such situations. "I don't know, I'll go ask," she says.

I used the time that she was gone to give Anna a big hug and several words of encouragement, knowing that she would regret not having performed to the best of her ability. She needed to succeed. For her own sake.

Mrs. McDaniel returned to tell us that we could come back another time and repeat the test without all the extra distraction imposed by having 15 or so kids, their parents and teachers in the same room. Anna did not want to come back a second time. She grabbed the sheet with the colors on it and started spitting out correct answers left and right so that we could get out of there and not come back until the fall.

And we probably won't.