I remember clearly the moment my husband and I stopped in the hospital lobby, he clutching the car seat with our tiny, wiggly newborn daughter in it, and looked at each other, both of us wondering when a responsible adult would step in and take over.
Surely they won't just let us leave with her, we said. Somebody must know we have no idea what we're doing, and will pull us aside to make sure we have the proper training, the right paperwork, some semblance of a clue.
It turns out all that comes about five years later, when it's time to register your child for kindergarten.
That's when a parent, hopefully by now with a bit more of a clue, shows up at the school with what must be more paperwork than a person attempting to emigrate to and find work in a foreign country, to officially become a student. That morning, at what will be my daughter's elementary school for the next six years, I was one of dozens of parents, nervously clutching fistfuls of documents and jostling for a place in line to ensure our little ones snagged a spot at the burgeoning facility.
But once the paperwork was done, the real panic set in.
Should we have opted for a language immersion program? Would she have done better in Montessori? Could we have cut back our expenses more to make private school a possibility?
The choices had been many and, for that, we feel lucky to be in a thriving school district that provides parents with a range of options to best meet their children's needs.
In the end, we decided it was most important to us that our daughter attend the neighbourhood school with friends she has made on our street. And although we're happy with our choice, thoughts of our (to us) tiny and still very wiggly daughter roaming a great big school on her own are, as any parent new to the kindergarten rodeo knows, terrifying.
She's a bright kid, full of seemingly boundless energy who has been passionately devoted to Thomas the Train and Shaun the Sheep. She can effortlessly identify dozens of dinosaurs, keenly aware of their striking similarities but also the tiny details that differentiate them, and adores animals of all kinds (much the better when they are drawn and cut out of construction paper, often dogs with wings, inexplicably).
She loves the outdoors and digging in the dirt to find worms but she also loves dance classes and tutus and huge, sparkly rings from the dentist's office.
And she is terrifically shy, often occupying herself with solo endeavours while groups of kids swirl in play around her.
Have we prepared her well enough for the social complexities of the playground? How comfortable will she be raising her hand to answer a teacher's question, or to ask for help? Will school be a place of fear, confusion and anxiety or will it open up a vast horizon of learning, fuelling the spark that drives her curiosity? Will she be gently guided, encouraged and supported at the beginning of this great big adventure we call school?
Will she eat her lunch?
Starting next week, she will be in the hands of a teacher who has likely welcomed enthusiastic kids and nervous parents to kindergarten many, many times — finally, a responsible adult who knows what he or she is doing! — and I am alternately thrilled that she will be under the careful tutelage of an experienced professional and baffled that such a person would willingly choose to shepherd 22 five-year-olds for five days a week, 10 months a year.
On Sept. 8, my daughter will be going to kindergarten. My husband and I will stand at the door to her classroom, vying for space for one last hug, willing the moment to last longer than it can.
And then we will let her go.
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