(Pre)school Anxiety

When my older children were three years old, I packed them a lunch box and shipped them off to preschool. I experienced very little anxiety or worry during this process. The girls were bored with me at home. They were eager to meet new friends and play on a new playground. The first time I dropped them off, they ran out of the car and straight into the arms of their new teachers. There were no sentimental goodbyes, no child looking like a long-lost puppy through the window as I pulled my car out of the parking lot.

Sending my kids to preschool felt like the natural, normal progression that it is for so many children.

This year is a bit different for me.

I've toured three different preschools for my 2-and-a-half-year old, wringing my hands over details such as start times and end times and student-teacher ratio. I've talked several times with each of the directors. I've carefully watched how the teachers interact with the students.

I'm anxious and worried, because my third daughter is just not ready for preschool. She is very social, verbal, active -- like most toddlers -- but I know in my gut that she’s not ready.

Whenever we go anywhere new, and a stranger tries to talk to my daughter or interact with her in any way, she clings to me like saran wrap. She cries, even. She is my gutsy kid who can jump in a bounce house with kids four times her size, who dives in the deep end of the pool even though she often forgets to hold her breath, who can tackle her 8-year sister to the ground. But she doesn’t want to be left somewhere else without me-- not even at neighbors’ homes who she has known since birth.

It's not that she has a problem separating from me. I work part-time from home, and I have left her with a baby-sitter for 7-8 hours a week since January. But I have grown weary of baby-sitters with complicated college coursework schedules, who send texts 45 minutes beforehand to cancel. I need regular, reliable childcare. I need preschool.

I should be over this, shouldn’t I? This is my third child. I should be more confident in my decision-making. I should know by now that these sorts of issues only seem like big ones at the time, and that a few years into the future, I will laugh that I made it into such a big deal.

But I struggle with the feeling that the right choice for me, this time, is not also the right choice for my child.

I eventually did pick a preschool for my toddler. And when she starts there after Labor Day, I’ll be meeting a friend for breakfast after what I assume will be an incredibly nerve-wrecking drop off. It may not be the best thing for my daughter, but for now, it’s the best I can do as a mother.