School Choice

Pregnancy is a time of preparation. The mother’s body is continuously changing preparing to give birth. The baby’s body is continuously growing and becoming stronger waiting for his debut. While preparation in the lives of the mother and father are taking place as well. There seems to be so much to get ready! You have to get all the essentials—diapers, wipes, car-seat, stroller, highchair, burp cloths, nursery décor, clothes, and then more clothes, nursing pads, a nursing pump, bottles, blankets, and the list could go on and on. You are told to take child birth classes and CPR classes. You have to child-proof the house and get that nursery looking perfect. The funny thing about all that preparation is that it doesn’t really matter that much. It can all be done after the baby arrives, and often there is plenty of down time to get it all done when the baby is still in the hospital. However, it seems to consume the minds of the mothers leading up to the birth. Everything has to be just perfect.

In the midst of pregnancy the logical thing seems to be to prepare for when the baby arrives. I’m sure some of you other moms understand when I say most of those things really don’t matter. However, when it’s all you have to think about—it just makes sense. As my children grow I find myself having to make “more important” decisions. As my perspective has changed (seems like daily) those “important” decisions seem to change right along with it. Decisions about nursery décor seem very unimportant when thinking about the decisions we now debate. Our newest decision is where to send our oldest to school.

On one hand we are so very blessed to have so many options. On the other hand it seems like it would make life so much easier if there was one clear choice. In my eyes we have three choices, homeschooling, catholic school, or public school. Each choice has it’s pros and cons—which I could list here for you, but I’m guessing my list and your list would be different. This only makes sense since our children are different and our perspectives are different. There is not a correct answer—no one size fits all.

So instead I will tell you that for now we have decided to send our oldest to kindergarten at public schools. We are very blessed to live in a great school corporation that consistently ranks at the top in the state academically. There are things that I’m not thrilled about such as class size, all day kindergarten, not enough play, and probably some other things I can’t think of currently. However, for now we are going to see how it goes. In an ideal world we would have an amazing Catholic school that was affordable and right down the street from us and that had smaller class sizes, but we don’t live in an ideal world. We do live in a world where we get to decide though. Luckily, I know going into the school year that if anything goes wrong or if we don’t like the decision we made we can pull her out and try a different approach. And I think that is what I’ve learned through the whole process of school choosing, nothing is ever permanent. That fact alone is why I think this “huge decision” (that will look tiny in the big scheme of parenting) isn’t keeping me awake at night anymore.

What about you? Do you have young children who haven’t started school yet? What have you decided for their schooling? Do you have older children who are already in school? How do you feel about where they are?