Coming Soon to a Toddler's 'Hood Near You
Getting a rising 3-year-old into a preschool program is far too intense and complicated and 'round these parts gets parents to do truly insane things.
These are the things I never envisioned when having a child. I never thought about sending them to school before kindergarten, I didn't realize it was even an option on the horizion and now I can safely say I know too much.
Hollywood, if you want to have the next great reality show I'd suggest you come to Baltimore or any city where private schooling is all the rage because the public school system is failing children miserably.
Over the course of the last month we have been to a lot of schools. Starting with one that we really hoped would be the "magic" school. Upon arrival we were informed numerous times that registration starts at 6:30pm but that parents often line up earlier. And, when that didn't seem to garner enough buzz we were then told that parents show up "as early as 10am" and there are "limited spaces available". Still I guess there wasn't enough urgency on behalf of the parents at the open house and so we were told in hushed tones that sometimes parents even line up before that. And finally we were told that when the teacher arrived last year there were "10 people in line!" at 8am when she arrived for school that day.
Absurd!
They expect parents to wait outside for almost 12 hours for a preschool program for THREE year olds. Come on! We're talking numbers, shapes and colors here people, not rocket science. So in the middle of February you are supposed to wait outside an ENTIRE day in LINE without leaving for a POSSIBLE spot. No thank you! And, the fact that you kept ramping it up, making it more urgent, indulging every helicopter parent in the room. I say "No thank you!" I'll raise a "free-range" kid if I have too. But this isn't Yale or Harvard it's PRESCHOOL.
Please, let's all just agree to STOP. THE. INSANITY!
