Remember when I thought I could spend everyday with the children for 18 years with nary a break? That was a good one, wasn’t it? For my part, I remember your reactions: many a raised eyebrow, the occasional knowing smile, the rare but stand-out comments like, “Yeah, right.” Well, you were all right. ALL OF YOU. As it turns out, just under five years is my limit. And I know that’s true because I passed my limit two weeks ago at 1:44pm. Don’t ask.
We’re going to send the girls to the Waldorf School of Philadelphia. I just went to an observation morning there yesterday, and I have to say that I wish they’d make it into a boarding school, because I walked out of there with very little doubt that they would do a much better job of raising the children than I ever could.
They have mixed age kindergarten there, so kindergarten is actually ages 3-6. Unfortunately, it’s full, so our application is on the wait list. Let’s talk for a minute about applications, just generally. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to answer some questions honestly because 1) they might not make sense for your life, so fitting your life into an answer to that question is impossible, and 2) sometimes you really want to lie to make yourself look better.
We had a couple of pencil chewing answers, such as “What time do your children go to sleep?” Now, 11pm is honest, but surely 8pm looks better, and the children can’t tell time anyway so there’s no chance they’d contradict us. The other toughy was “Which television shows or movies do your children watch?” You strongly get the impression from the Waldorf material that the appropriate amount of television per day is negative three hours. This negative time allows your child to help all those other poor children out there whose parents don’t care about them enough to spend their days making paper mache bunnies rather than watching Nickelodeon.
Speaking of Nickelodeon, lying about the children watching TV was more problematic than lying about what time they go to sleep, being as they can and do talk about the characters in their TV shows. Majka and I wondered if it would be believable to tell the school that they had cousins named Dora and Diego. And, er, Max and Ruby, Kai-lan, Super Why, and unfortunately the list goes on. So we were forced into honesty (more or less). My neighbor was right five years ago when she advised us not to teach the children how to talk. THAT WAY THEY CAN NEVER RAT YOU OUT.
After turning in the application, I just hoped against hope that having gay parents would count more than having quality parents. The school must want diversity, right? The girls might be white, but they’ve got two mommies! I’ll even stitch that into their clothing for the school’s promotional materials if need be.
Alas, I’ve been reassured already by a quick email from the admissions director in which she called our application “wonderful” and professed that they were “excited” that our girls might be joining the school. But now that I think about it, I should really make sure gmail didn’t truncate that email to delete the ending “when hell freezes over.” No, just checked, we’re okay. So she’s either lying or being gay has paid dividends again. Or I was worrying about nothing. No, that can’t possibly be it. Must be the gay thing.
The school also has a summer camp which didn’t have a wait list, so Quinn is signed up for six weeks and Elsie just for the last two. We’ll have to wait and see if anything opens up for the school year.
I’m excited about the kids starting school. REALLY EXCITED. As any just about any woman who has been home with her kids for almost five years will tell you. I want to be clear that this is not a personal indictment of home schooling. I still believe it’s probably the best way for kids to learn and grow – with the right parent. Unfortunately for my kids, it looks like I’m not the right parent for it after all, and a Waldorf education seems like the next best thing.
