Preschool Plans

11.23.06

I did it.  After months of talking about it, thinking about it, and knowing it needed to be done… I finally enrolled my kid in preschool.  I procrastinated a long time on this simple little task, for a variety of reasons.  One of them was summertime. There was a whole lot of beach and about a million parks to explore when we got on each others’ nerves.  And then she wasn’t quite potty trained and I wasn’t exactly sure what the pre-school guidelines were about that, but I suspected it was a prerequisite.  Third, and maybe the biggest reason for procrastination, was that the only pre-school I was familiar with was the Head Start program, and I just haven’t been up to the complete and total invasion of financial privacy required to enroll my Little Miss. 

 

We’re the working poor.  I know this, and I have certainly come to understand the implications.  It means we don’t qualify for daycare assistance but we can’t afford daycare.  We don’t receive any welfare benefits so our child doesn’t qualify for free Head Start, but you can be sure after baring our financial souls to some government employee we’d still end up at the top of any sliding fee scale they devised.  The other thing I “heard” was that if you have to pay for Head Start in Wisconsin there’s a waiting list (but if you receive welfare benefits there isn’t).  Do I need this?  I don’t have the energy to jump through these particular hoops.

 

So here’s what I did.  I opened the Yellow Pages to “Schools.”  There were several listings under “preschool and kindergarten services.”  I called them.  One was the YMCA.  A very helpful person answered and invited us to come for a tour. 

 

I asked my Little Miss if she wanted to go to school.  She didn’t.  There are a couple of unresolved #2 potty training issues and, as incentive, I have suggested to her that she can’t go to school until she gets a handle on this.  So she was a little freaked out about going to school, but when I said, “We’ll just go check it out,” she got into the spirit of things.  I think she said, “Mom, we’re just going to check things out at school today,” a hundred times during the 5 minute drive to school.  I laughed the whole way, because this summer we had a bear digging in our garbage cans and for weeks afterward Little Miss would open the back door, hang her head outside, and say, “I’m just checking things out, Mom.”

 

When we got there she was, of course, enthralled. 

 

Oddly enough for a high-energy kid she doesn’t jump right into things.  She hangs back and takes it all in, keeping to herself for a bit.  Even so, she thought their toys were pretty darn cool.  And when all the kids sat down at atable for lunch there was longing to join them written all over her little girl face. 

 

The gal giving the tour was full of great information.  My girl could come for preschool only, or we could sign up for a combination of preschool and daycare.

 

Which leads to the last reason I had put off the whole preschool thing.

 

My work schedule is random.  The only thing I always know for sure is that I will work every other weekend and have opposite weekends off.  I never know anything else until the schedule comes out.  So any ½ day preschool program would be a nightmare of transportation logistics. Sometimes I’d be scheduled off.  But sometimes I’d be working.

 

No problem at YMCA.  The pre-school hours are built right into their daycare day.  I can drop her off early if I have a day shift.  I can pick her up and take her to grandma’s if I work evenings.  And if I’m off, well, then I get the whole day all to myself (!).  Yay for that!

 

In the car after our tour Little Miss said, “Can I go to that school, Mom?  I wanted to sit at the table with those kids, but there wasn’t a place for me.”

 

“Next time there will be,” I toldher, relived to have it settled.  Kids, teachers, stuff to learn, and room to run 2 days a week.  How perfect is that?  And every once in a while (or more often) a day to myself.  Oh yeah.  Let’s do it.