Kindergarten Orientation…or How Mommy Ensures the School Secretary Never Forgets Her

My son had kindergarten orientation yesterday, at 9-freaken-am. First, who the hell has orientation that early? Half the kids were missing because parents were either on vacation or had to work (or maybe they just didn’t feel like getting out of bed that early). Jake and I didn’t sleep well the night before, he’s going through a “monsters are going to get me” phase. So we managed to get about 7 hours of sleep, which is not enough for either of us. Yeah, I know, there are those of you out there who can be perfectly perky on three hours of sleep. Woohoo for you. But I am not one of those people, and neither is my son. So we’re already pretty tired by the time we get to the school, and when we’re tired, we get extra weepy. Add to that the fact that he was terrified of the whole concept of kindergarten and I’m already bawling every time I think about it, and it didn’t make for a good start to the morning.

We were doing okay, sitting in our seats listening to the principal introduce the staff, drinking our PTO-provided apple juice and waiting to get started. Then they called the kids to go with their new teacher to the classroom. Jake lost it. He started with little tears and that terrified face and progressed to shaking hysterics. I wanted to grab him and bolt, screw this kindergarten crap, I can teach him at home! Well, I can’t, for many reasons, but the urge was there. The school secretary looked at me and said “let him go, he’ll be fine.” Then I started bawling. Perhaps I exhibited that same terrified look right before the tears came because the secretary rushed over and sat with me, patting my hand and telling me it was going to be okay. She stayed with me until it was her turn to speak, then came back again to check on me. I was mildly embarrassed, but hey, at least the school secretary will never forget me!

After listening to countless people tell us how important attendance is, we got to go the classroom and listen to the teacher explain every single form and pamphlet in a massive folder. While I appreciate the time she took, I never understood the need to explain every form in any given packet to grown adults. I can read. I can think. I can figure it out. Highlight the important information and let me go free. If someone else is struggling, let them go to the proper authority for assistance. I guess I’m just an impatient person. When that torture was finally over, we got to ride the bus. I haven’t ridden a school bus since I was in 8th grade, and Jake has never been on one that I know of. Maybe with pre-school, I don’t know if they used school buses or real buses for their trips. Then it was over. Now I have two weeks to fill out a ton of forms, which actually took me all of ten minutes to get through. I have another rant about recess, which I was going to put in this post but I think it deserves its own. So stay tuned for that!