Baby Tears

My oldest child was born less than 2 weeks before the cutoff that would have put her in school a year later. She was socially immature and had never attended preschool. The local school district, apparently in a bid to up their enrollment, had switched to offering only full-day kindergarten. When I considered how hard it would be on my daughter to go to school all-day as an immature 4-year-old, deciding to homeschool her instead was a nearly automatic choice. I did put her in a part-time program offered by the school district to homeschoolers, and that was a good choice for her. She had some school friends and a terrific music teacher.

A year or two later, a local friend told me how her daughter came home from kindergarten each day and cried from weariness. She wished in retrospect that she hadn't sent her child to full-day kindergarten.

Last night, another friend, in a school district which does have half-day kindergarten, said that her young first grader is worn out by her day-long schedule and that she wishes she could homeschool her children.

What is wrong with our system that we send children just leaving toddlerhood into an academic environment where they are worn out and sad at the end? Every weekday? Finland, a favorite educational ideal in recent years, doesn't do that. Young children are done after a morning of school.

Young homeschooled children are fortunate in that they can rest enough and play more, as befits their physical needs and mental development. I'm not opposed to rigor in academics. Dd11 is reading Ivanhoe (definitely difficult for her), working through a high-school level grammar text, and studying German and Latin. My idea of an exciting acquisition to our home library is McGraw-Hill's Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. But she is 11 and able to tackle difficult tasks for longer periods. Her day should be more challenging than that of a much younger child.