When Will was ten months old, I traveled to Europe with a group of my students, and my mom came to town to take care of him.
Upon my return, as we talked about how things went, all the cool stuff he was starting to do as he approached one, she casually mentioned she had fed him deli meat for lunch one day.
I immediately shut it down. My kid would not, I repeat NOT, be eating any processed sodium laden foods ever.
EVER.
I laugh now. He's four and a half and at one point in time he had hot dogs for multiple meals a week.
We even had them for lunch yesterday.
But I was so consumed with what I put in his body--I don't care what goes into mine; it was destroyed by binge drinking and late night Burrito Buggy (awwww yeah Athens woop woop!) years ago--but his was pristine, and all the potential links between processed foods, and hormones, and pesticides...he was going to live in a bubble and eat a completely organic diet of homemade foods for the rest of his life as far as I was concerned.
I would never cave to McDonald's Happy Meals or the allure of a Chick-fil-A playground on a polar vortex January day...
Turns out I'm human, and our relatively healthy diet is also smattered with kid-friendly, exhausted-mom options, and I don't have guilt about it at all now.
The whole non-organic thing did cause me a great deal of stress (so lame, I know), which is why I shouldn't be surprised that I just ate half a jar of Mrs. Richardson's butterscotch caramel ice cream topping with a spoon for lunch because I am completely FREAKING OUT about choosing a kindergarten for him.
KINDERGARTEN.
We aren't even talking about best-case-scenario-to-get-into-an-ivy-league-college-or-top-notch-university education decision here.
Kinder. Freaking. Garten.
Really, if we're going to be pretentious about it, which school buys off-brand finger paints in bulk and which one buys organic berry and nature dyed paints? I'll take organic please. (Who says that?)
At this point, I don't care about paint. Or class pets. Or even that every kid gets an iPad upon walking in the door. I just want three things for him: I want him to progress in reading. I want him to feel challenged academically. And I want him to make friends and not be bullied.
(Side note: At his basketball game this past Saturday, his two little friends had on stupid basketball socks that you jack up to your mid-shin, and Will doesn't have those, but I watched him want so desperately to fit in that he pulled on his ankle socks and said, "Look guys, my socks go up, too," and I actually had to leave the gym because I was crying. It's stuff like this that makes me cringe about school. It also makes me think I'm never going to make it through the formative years if I don't toughen up. Never mind him; I'm worried about me.)
We moved last summer so that we could be in a fantastic school district when this time came around, and it would be a no-brainer for us. Duh. He goes to the fantastic public school where we live.
Except for the flaw that it's only a half-day program, and, well, both parents work, so...
Seriously--what do you working parents do? How on earth do you make this work?
So we looked into a full-day option at a Catholic school. It was fabulous. They impressed me with their smart boards, and media technology library, and class pet birds, and field trips, and peer partner program. But the cheapskate in me doesn't want to pay Catholic school prices (and, ahem, elephant in the room: we aren't Catholic) when he can get something equally great for FREE. (Or nearly so...nothing is free, including that free public education.) I've just got to find an option for that other half of the day I can't be home with him...
And so here I sit, pros-cons list made, advice sought and received from multiple respected friends and colleagues, tours completed and principals met, and packets of information read and re-read and dog eared, applications to both places filled out and ready to go.
And all I have to show for any kind of decision is a butterscotch caramel drip on my lip.
And that butterscotch caramel? It's not organic, either.
-Kristin
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