Kindergarten Assessment

Amanda’s going to Kindergarten! Well at the end of August, that is. I know, it’s hard for me to believe too. Feels like we just brought her home from the hospital a few weeks ago instead of almost FIVE YEARS AGO. Somebody hand me a Kleenex, please.

Amanda went to Kindergarten Assessment a couple of weeks ago and I was a WRECK. That’s right, Amanda: totally fine. Me: complete WRECK. I remember my own Kindergarten Assessment and how stressed out I was about it because I did NOT want to go to school.

My brother went to school and didn’t like it so I wanted no part of it. I was perfectly happy staying at home playing Little People, watching Mighty Mouse and All My Children and having the toys, crayons and my mom all to myself for hours at a time. I think I wanted to fail my Kindergarten Assessment but when Mrs. Reynolds promised a treat afterwards I performed like a well-trained monkey. I got a fabulous piece of chocolate and a ticket to Kindergarten. D’oh!

For months I’ve been talking about how exciting and fun Kindergarten will be. There will be paste to eat, big vats of paint to spill on the carpet, boys to kiss, brown rolls of paper towels so hard you’ll get splinters when you dry your hands, games of I’ll show you my belly button if you show me yours with Tim Smith during naptime… Or maybe that was just my Kindergarten experience. But my point is that Amanda had no fears about the assessment or going to Kindergarten, which is how it should be.

I was nervous enough for both of us anyway. Because, let's be honest, I figured that if she didn’t do well it would be my fault. Oh and Scott’s of course, because he’s the one who vetoed pre-school. But I’m the one who didn’t demand it. I'm her mom and I should have fought harder for it.

Apparently that commercial about how going to preschool means you’ll do better for the rest of your life has not had quite the same impact on Scott that it has had on me. Some days it plays in an endless loop in my head followed by this nightmarish vision of Amanda out behind her third grade classroom smoking cigarettes and tossing beer cans onto the hopscotch field with all the other little thugs who didn’t go to preschool. These moments brought to you by: Mommy Guilt.

So back to the big assessment... we practiced for weeks: her letters, numbers, shapes, writing her name, basic math, anthropology, Latin, physics. Okay maybe not all that, but we studied and practiced. I took it as a good sign that her appointment was with a Mrs. Starr. Not only is star a happy shiny name, but it’s also the name of one of my very favorite teachers, Mr. Starr, my 6th grade teacher who is probably at least partially responsible for the fact that this blog even exists but I’ll write about him another time. My point is that I panicked a tiny bit when they told me, first thing, that Mrs. Starr was unavailable and that we would be meeting with the other teacher whose name I had a bit of trouble pronouncing. What? Uh oh.

But the teacher was wonderful and her classroom was happy and fun and Amanda marched right in there and… well I don’t want to say that she was trying to make me look bad. But she was. Yeah she was definitely trying to make me look bad. For instance the teacher asked her if she could count and Amanda said, "Of course," and then she proceeded to count to ten. The teacher then asked if she knew what came after ten and Amanda said, “Eight?”

You know how one minute you think you know exactly who you are and then something happens to show you that you’re somebody you don’t really recognize? Well that’s what Kindergarten Assessment did to me. One minute I was this totally laid back, low pressure, non-competitive you’ll get there when you get there kind of mom and the next minute I was - well, a crazy woman.

There I was sitting in a tiny little chair in the corner pretending to read a tiny little book while inside I was screaming, “Eight? Eight? EIGHT?!?” It was all I could do to just sit there and force myself not to turn into some obnoxious stage mother off to the side motioning like a lunatic to Amanda or loudly coughing “ELEVEN” into my hand… And then Amanda pulled the same routine with recognizing the letters of the alphabet and reversed the N & D in her name. While I’m thinking, “She KNOWS this stuff…I halfway expected Amanda to just whisper to the teacher, “Look, Mrs. P, my mommy didn’t send me to pre-school and my daddy doesn’t let me play with play-doh. I think we both know the direction my life is heading. Do you think I could take a quick smoke break to clear my head?”

Despite everything I’ve said to the contrary, the truth is Amanda did a great job at her assessment and the teacher said she had absolutely no doubt that she is ready for kindergarten. Highly questionable whether I am ready for kindergarten, but Amanda should do just fine.

As soon as we got outside I told Amanda what a great job she’d done, but couldn't resist asking her, “How do you spell your name?” “A-M-A-N-D-A“ Right, and what comes after ten?” “Eleven.” “And after eleven?” “Twelve.” “And after twelve?” “Thirteen.” “And…” “Mommy, can we go out for doughnuts?” “Okay.”