Posted: Aug 13, 08 5:13pm
I spent the past week in Arizona babysitting three beautiful grandchildren while my daughter and her husband went on a getaway trip. Our oldest grandchild had started kindergarten the day before I arrived (school starts early in Arizona!).
Taking Ashtyn to and from kindergarten every day brought back memories of my own children beginning school--especially that first son. Up to then, we as his parents were the smartest, most wonderful people in his life. We were so wise and capable and our son looked up to us and we were the most important people in our son's life. Then came kindergarten. On that very first day I realized that our lives were never going to be the same. There was another adult, even another WOMAN, in my young son's life who suddenly loomed as a threat. By the end of that first week of kindergarten, we, the intelligent, all wise and wonderful parents had become incompetent imbeciles! If we tied his shoes differently than Mrs. Hill, WE did it wrong. If we formed an alphabet letter differently than Mrs. Hill, WE did it wrong. What a heartbreak it was to be demoted from being intelligent, all wise and wonderful to being imcompetent and dumb. I was devastated!! Then the next year, our oldest daughter started kindergarten. More salt rubbed into the wound.
Slowly, about the time our third child began school, I started to realize what a blessing it was that some of the pressure to be the perfect parent had been taken off of my shoulders by the kindergarten teachers! And I realized that in order for a child to learn, a bond of trust must be formed between that child and the teacher,
You know, I don't think we ever regained the status in our children's eyes of being intelligent, a little bit wise and sometimes wonderful, until they became parents themselves.
As I watched Ashtyn happily running to give her teacher a hug every morning when she got to school, the thought occurred to me that there really is justice--as the saying goes, "What goes around, comes around." My daughter is soon going to realize that she has been replaced by Ashtyn's kindergarten teacher--the cycle continues....
There is no need to say " I told you so" to our children--they'll find out for themselves that mom and dad weren't so dumb after all.
