Sometimes a seemingly happy milestone can feel like ‘the 'worstest day ever’

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

It was a tearful morning Wednesday in Wilmington's kindergarten classrooms as 5- and 6-year-olds released the secure grips of their parents and started their first day of 13 years of public education.
The tears, however, didn't belong solely to the children.
Their parents were also feeling the full effects of separation anxiety, handing over their babies to strangers for an entire day, which would be followed by another entire day, followed by another entire day ..
My daughter, who is 4, wasn't among them, so I was not one of the shell-shocked faces leaving the elementary schools. I felt spared. 
But the majority of her little friends are a year older than she is, so we know many of those sweet kindergarten faces, and I enjoy the friendship of their mothers.
Over and over, they have warned me: “Prepare yourself now. It’s awful.”

​    They’ve been mentally gearing up for months and really starting to worry about it over the past few weeks. 
    Adding to their stress was their frustration at the lack of information available about what their child’s daily kindergarten life would be like: What time would they eat lunch? What time would a bus pick them up? Who would be their teacher? What is she like? How much does milk cost? Who else is in their classroom? Should their child’s name be written on their crayons, or do those supplies just go into a communal pile?
    The open houses held on the eve of Wilmington schools’ first day helped answer some of those questions and allowed the little ones to see what their environment would be like. 
    Kindergarten assessments also offered a brief glimpse of the buildings that will become their new worlds.
    Open houses were likely scheduled that close to the start of school in order to ensure that parents would be able to attend — without vacation conflicts — but the information was too little, too late for many parents.
    Teachers’ class rosters were posted a couple of weeks ago on school doors, but the news of those postings came via word of mouth, from other parents who happened upon them
    People in charge sometimes don't realize that, when facing a new situation, most people seek as much information as they can get. 
    It helps ease fears.
    With knowledge comes power.
     Like doctors who forget what it’s like to be on the other end of the needle, or journalists who forget what it's like to be on the other end of the interview, school employees sometimes forget what it’s like to be a wide-eyed 5-year-old — or his freaked-out parent.
    It’s not their everyday routine. It’s not their safe home environment. In a word, it’s terrifying.
    Children often act out in the weeks before kindergarten starts, according to this month’s Parenting magazine, because they feel the stress of the impending change in their lives.
    One of my daughter’s friends, who is quite outgoing and independent, told her mother as she went to bed that she most definitely did not want to get up and go to kindergarten the next day. “It's going to be the worstest day of my life,” she declared.
    We hear stories so often of parents who are thrilled after a long summer break to get their older kids out of the house, out of their hair and back in school that we often underestimate the emotional turmoil of the first days of kindergarten, especially in those with a full-day regimen.
    On Wednesday, some Wilmington parents got together to offer solace to one another; one mom I know opened her house with a brunch for other distraught parents. 
    Others went shopping for some retail therapy. 
    Another mom I know said she couldn't bear to leave the grounds of the school after she dropped off her daughter, so she pulled in a parking space, “like some pedophile,” and waited to see her child on the playground during recess. 
    Yet another returned to get a glimpse of her daughter at recess and couldn’t help but get out and wave at the girl. “If the teacher saw me, I'm sure she thought I was a loon.”
    Desperate times call for desperate measures.
    “It’s worse than you can imagine,” said a friend whose son’s hand was trembling as they entered the classroom. Soon after she told me that, I got a call from another mom who described the child handover a little more graphically: “It’s like sending a cow off to slaughter,” she said. I laughed, of course, but that's because my child was safe at home for another year.
    Before you start to think that these are overreactions to a routine milestone, consider that the vast majority of these kindergarteners were born after Sept. 11, 2001 — born into a world of uncertainty, living their lives in a nation at war. One of my daughter’s friends, who is a kindergartener at Holmes Elementary, was born on 9/11. 
    One of my own friends, whose daughter is a kindergartener at Denver Elementary, found out she was pregnant on Sept. 10 — the day before the towers fell. Consider that the moms I’ve written about have given up careers in order to stay home with their children, so they have been with their kids pretty much every day since they brought them home from the hospital.
    Consider that Wilmington has all-day, everyday kindergarten classes, with rigorous academic standards to meet. 
    Perhaps the kindergarten of your childhood wasn’t quite as rigorous — probably half-days filled with coloring, playing, multiple recesses and naptimes.
    Consider that many parents are wary about complaining at school for fear of repercussions against their children.
    Kindergarten is no longer a transitional year; that's now the role of preschool. Instead, kindergarten is a sudden, deep immersion into the rigors of education.
    In the words of one of the Denver kindergarteners who balked at returning on Day Two: “It's too long. It's just too long.”
    Many teachers and parents alike absolutely love the all-day schedule. 
    Others of us, though, aren’t quite so enamored. 
    We err on the side of extending carefree childhood as long as possible.