(no subject)

I sometimes think that saying goodbye to Cordelia at the start of every school day is one of the hardest things I've done. It's routine and takes all of two seconds, just a kiss and a 'Have fun!' but it's hard to do. School has the potential to be wonderful or to be awful, and not a thing I can do will make it one or the other.

I have a suspicion that this will get harder as Cordelia gets older. There will come a day when the kiss is too mushy for her. There will come a day when even the best time at school is miserable (middle school, I'm looking at you). There will be things neither of us expects and things that I expect but not as soon as they come. I want joy in Cordelia's life rather than misery. I try to balance letting her learn for herself with talking to her about what she needs to know. That is, I've told her that she has to treat her friends well or they'll stop being friends, but she's going to have to internalize that by having it happen once or twice.

I did make sure she wore green on St. Patrick's Day. I didn't want her getting pinched for failing to or having to pull up her pants repeatedly because all the green was on her tights or anything of the sort. Do kids these days still pinch each other for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day? It seems like the sort of kid meanness that wouldn't go away just because decades have passed.

If kids do still pinch each other for that, I feel especially sorry for the foreign kids. In the lower grades of Cordelia's school, there are a lot of children of foreign graduate students. Many of them start the year with little or no English. (I'm not entirely certain if they disappear in later grades or if it's simply that their English has improved to the point that it doesn't matter. I have one second grade and one fifth grade class for comparison (from seeing the classes in the library), and I think the second grade has one foreign student and the fifth grade none.) A child from Korea or China or Egypt won't have any warning that a day like St. Patrick's Day or April Fool's Day is coming and is different.

And it is April Fool's Day making me write this. I've been thinking about the difficulties for a while, but today, I wondered how much warning-- and what sort of warning-- I should give Cordelia. I settled for saying that people would say things that weren't true today and that she should bear it in mind. While we were waiting for the bell this morning, we saw fifth graders picking on each other with April Fool's lies. I don't know if Cordelia spotted it or not. She was busy watching for one of her friends.

If stuff like minor holidays and simply saying goodbye is this hard, how am I ever going to manage the really tough stuff?

(no subject)

I sometimes think that saying goodbye to Cordelia at the start of every school day is one of the hardest things I've done. It's routine and takes all of two seconds, just a kiss and a 'Have fun!' but it's hard to do. School has the potential to be wonderful or to be awful, and not a thing I can do will make it one or the other.

I have a suspicion that this will get harder as Cordelia gets older. There will come a day when the kiss is too mushy for her. There will come a day when even the best time at school is miserable (middle school, I'm looking at you). There will be things neither of us expects and things that I expect but not as soon as they come. I want joy in Cordelia's life rather than misery. I try to balance letting her learn for herself with talking to her about what she needs to know. That is, I've told her that she has to treat her friends well or they'll stop being friends, but she's going to have to internalize that by having it happen once or twice.

I did make sure she wore green on St. Patrick's Day. I didn't want her getting pinched for failing to or having to pull up her pants repeatedly because all the green was on her tights or anything of the sort. Do kids these days still pinch each other for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day? It seems like the sort of kid meanness that wouldn't go away just because decades have passed.

If kids do still pinch each other for that, I feel especially sorry for the foreign kids. In the lower grades of Cordelia's school, there are a lot of children of foreign graduate students. Many of them start the year with little or no English. (I'm not entirely certain if they disappear in later grades or if it's simply that their English has improved to the point that it doesn't matter. I have one second grade and one fifth grade class for comparison (from seeing the classes in the library), and I think the second grade has one foreign student and the fifth grade none.) A child from Korea or China or Egypt won't have any warning that a day like St. Patrick's Day or April Fool's Day is coming and is different.

And it is April Fool's Day making me write this. I've been thinking about the difficulties for a while, but today, I wondered how much warning-- and what sort of warning-- I should give Cordelia. I settled for saying that people would say things that weren't true today and that she should bear it in mind. While we were waiting for the bell this morning, we saw fifth graders picking on each other with April Fool's lies. I don't know if Cordelia spotted it or not. She was busy watching for one of her friends.

If stuff like minor holidays and simply saying goodbye is this hard, how am I ever going to manage the really tough stuff?