Independent Thinker

In the car in the preschool parking lot, Rain tells me he doesn’t want to go to school. He fakes sleeping in his carseat. He tells me that he’s sleepy and can’t go to school. I distract him and get him unbuckled. The day before he told me he was sick and couldn’t go. But there are no tears, no theatrics. He marches confidently down the hall, past the door to his class, trying another stalling tactic. When he sees me waiting at the door, he moseys back.

Once through the door, he doesn’t hesitate. He takes off his coat, finds a hook, turns to kiss me goodbye, and tells me he is going to make some art. I watch him go. He heads straight for the back corner, then veers in a wide arc round back to the shelves of toys by the coat hooks. He looks up at me as he reaches for a large wooden tray filled with coloured blocks, dowels and cards with patterns, and informs me “This is new.”

I follow him to the table. “How come you decided not to do art?”

“There were too many kids,” he explains as he sits at an empty table.

“So what do you do with this new toy?” I ask him.

The preschool director sees us and comes to sit with Rain. “There are a few things you can do with this,” she begins.

Rain already has two dowels and has started to fit them into holes on the tray. “I’m going to do this.”

He ignores the pattern cards and starts loading all of the square blocks on the first dowel.

The director laughs, “Of course you are.” and looking up at me, says, “We’ve got an independent thinker here.”

I laugh too. “We’re certainly not worried about that.”

Talking to Rain again, she says “You like to do things your way.”

Turning her attention back to me, she tells me: “You’re going to get a call from the Kindergarten teacher.” She ruffles Rain’s hair to make him feel included – we’re not talking about you; we’re talking with you. “Sometimes you have to do things the way the teacher asks you,” she goes on.

She smiles when she sees he’s got the whole dowel filled with just square blocks, leaving the round and rectangular blocks on the tray. “Wow. Can you tell me what you’ve done here?” she asks.

Rain says “I put all the squares on.”

I kiss him and take my leave. On the drive home, I’m even more convinced that public school is a bad idea.

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There are a couple of things going on here. (Okay, more than a couple so I am going to do several posts and only focus on one at a time.)

It concerns me that Rain is increasingly reluctant about school. Is it the number of kids? The structure? Something else? Is it totally normal? I really truly believe that kids love to learn and that school should be set up to facilitate that. Getting to the bottom of Rain’s reluctance about school could make all the difference in whether he retains his love of learning into adulthood. With Kindergarten looming, I am beginning to worry about how this will play out for him.

Especially as a spirited, independent thinker.

I recently read Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and found it incredibly helpful in working with Rain at home. We discovered what we already knew about him being slow to adapt to change, but also that he is perceptive (“often accused of not listening”) and energetic. The book has a chapter on Success in School and it begins with this quote:

I didn’t want him to be “discussed.” I wanted him to be treasured.

This chapter raised some flags for me about how Rain’s personality will likely be met in Kindergarten. A boy who is loud, full of ideas, talks a lot, moves a lot, dislikes changing from one activity to another. This is the boy that will be disrupting the Kindergarten. The one who won’t be able to stay on task because he’s noticing every little detail in the room or needing to burn some energy, the one who will interrupt the story with his own ideas, the one who won’t want to stop what he’s doing because he’s not finished yet, the one who won’t want to do it the teacher’s way.

Public school is set up to work in a particular way and it hinges on kids behaving a certain way. The kids who can’t or won’t fit in to the format become the ones who are discussed, not treasured. My preschool director is already warning me about calls from the Kindergarten teacher and we haven’t even registered yet.

We joked about Rain being an independent thinker because while it is a marvelous positive thing, it can be hard to work with as a parent or educator. I get that. I live with him afterall. But I really dislike the message between the lines, the message that being an independent thinker is a bad thing and is going to get you into trouble.

The sad part is that unless Rain gets a lot of outstanding teachers, it will get him into trouble. My experience with public school tells me that’s true. Our experience this morning, tells me the teachers know it’s true too. Rain is just starting out his journey with formal learning (his preschool was purposely chosen because it is play based). He is a bright, inquisitive kid (aren’t they all?) and I am afraid of what public school will do to his fire to learn if he’s constantly told to sit still, do it this way, wait your turn.

This is Part I of a series on finding a school for Rain. I am aware that he’s got options and will discuss those in future posts. This series was inspired by Amber Strocel‘s post (Lack of) Educational Philosophy and Melody’s post at Breastfeeding Moms Unite called Seven Reasons I’m Sending My Child to Public School and The Three Big Reasons I Wish I Wasn’t. I was about to leave novels in their comment boxes and I realised that I should just write a post. Or two. Or three.