Today was the last day of kindergarten for my oldest son. I only shed a handful of tears. I really can’t help but think about him leaving me for college in like a minute. (He’s got it on the brain too. Yesterday we were involved in a spat over an apology note he was writing to a neighbor, and he informed me he wouldn’t be delivering it until the last day of college!) I know we’ve still got a bit and many milestones in between, but it really does just go by so stinkin’ fast.
This morning I was looking at pictures of him from first day vs. last day, and the same thing that always happens when I look at old pictures happened again. I can’t even remember him looking so little, and it was only a few months ago. I look at baby pictures sometimes of all three boys and am just amazed at how little I remember. I’m not one of those people with a mind like a steel trap. I’m all over the place. So to combat the inevitable memory loss I started writing things down.
I shared some things that we learned in the first week of kindergarten earlier, so it only seems natural to wrap up the year with some of my favorite memories of KP + Kinder. (In fact one of my memories will be of him referring to it always as “kinder.”) We started the year on training wheels and ended with a big kid on two.
What We’ve Learned This Year (Non-Academic Edition)
So here we go. This post is mainly for me – a record of things that will hopefully help me to remember what my boy was like at age 5. His overall persona in a nutshell.
Spring Break = Party at the Beach With Your Boyz
My 5 year old and his friends planned a Spring Break trip to Galveston. It’s not what you think. This was not a typical wild and crazy week by normal Spring Break standards. (Thank the Lord. I’m so not ready for that chapter of parenthood.) They had something entirely new and equally crazy in mind. You see, one of “the guys” at school saw a YouTube video and the Pokemon in it looked real. So real, that it had him and the entire Kinder Poke-crew questioning whether or not Pokemon really are “just in the phone.” They planned to go to Galveston to hunt for these real life Pokemon. I don’t know how far the other boys took this plan, but at our house there was a bag packed. K-man told us that one of his friends had some motorcycles they were taking to get down there. The day after we initially heard of the plan, he came home and told us that at recess some of the guys said they had to cut out because their moms said no. This led to a post-bedtime-parent-pow-wow about whether or not he knew this was pretend. I think he did. I hope he did.
Support Your Friends
One of my most vivid memories from our preschool days was of the end of the year graduation program. My sweet boy stood up with his peers to sing and instead held his shirt hem wiping his nose the entire time while sobbing. He’s got some serious stage fright. He can stand up in front of his class and teacher and talk to them or act silly and be the center of attention at family gatherings. But when it comes to foreign situations where a bunch of strangers have all eyes on him (or so he thinks anyway) the nerves take over and he ceases to function.
We have pushed him to participate in some things (like preschool graduation), but our general feeling at this point in his life is that it doesn’t really make sense to force him to do these (relatively unimportant) things that make him so visibly uncomfortable. It has been our experience that as time goes on, the number of situations that send him into breakdown mode are fewer and further between. He is very self aware about this problem too. At the end of the year he told me that he was able to speak on the announcements because he’s been seeing people do it and he knew what it was like, so he wasn’t nervous.
Our first awards ceremony in kindergarten did not go very smoothly. He received an award for being a great student, but could not get himself to walk onto the stage to actually receive it. (He got it anyway.) He did go up on stage to get his last perfect attendance award this spring. Though his face said he could lose it at any minute. But he was up there. And Kindergarten graduation was a much better experience too. He sang with the group on stage, did the hand movements, and only cried once. (The procession in was a little too much to handle! Me too buddy. Me too.)
Our first Christmas program … did not go. I asked him if he’d like to participate, and he was very sure that he did not. But he did want to go watch and support his friends. This was an evening program. Have you ever had the joy of experiencing elementary school Christmas programs? It’s not really the kind of thing I want to spend an evening doing even if my kid is up there, much less if he’s not. But how could I deny that sweet boy who wanted to see his friends perform the songs they’d been learning all semester? (Or since Thanksgiving? For one week? I have no idea.) So, here’s my son at his first ever school program. Supporting his friends. I will say though, I could hear him singing a lot better when he was sitting right next to me than I would’ve had he been on stage.
Even Good Kids Mess Up Sometimes
Sometimes looking at my oldest boy is like looking in a mirror. I see some qualities in him that I am so glad he got from me, but then sometimes the not so great traits come rearing their heads. One of those traits is people-pleasing. Neither of us are super horrible offenders (I do have the ability to say no and as an adult care increasingly less about pleasing others for its own sake), but I was the kind of kid in school that wanted my teachers to know that I was good. I would have freaked out if I had to “pull a card.” I was devastated after I got a D-hall for a dress code violation in middle school. My biggest boy is just like me. He does not want any reason for people to call attention to his faults and slip-ups.
I’ve spent a lot of the year trying to get him to realize that it’s not that big of a deal if every once in a while he has to move his clip down on the behavior chart. That if he loses his sanity and gets silly in the lunch line and has to sit on the fence for a second at recess, we will all move on. That once he gets his punishment at school for these things (as long as they are infrequent and minor offenses) he will not have additional consequences at home – I just want him to tell me about them. I can say from experience that it is exhausting to be so worried about the consequences of an occasional mess-up.
I am not trying to convince my kid to get crazy – just that everybody (even a good kid) talks out of turn, plays around, and messes up sometimes. I think I may have overdone it with this. Though we’re still not doing so hot on the “tell me about it” part (I have to fish for info!), by the end of the year he told me that it’s not that big of a deal if you have to move your clip down if you’re at the highest place on the behavior chart. And it’s also not that big of a deal if you have to move down to “time-out” as long as it’s after recess and you get it moved back up by the end of the day. Not sure yet how I feel about this manipulating the system stuff, but I am pleased that he can accept a consequence and move on.
One day I was trying to get the scoop about his class having to (as a group) sit out for a few minutes at recess. He revealed that he was not in the first group to get up from the fence, so I concluded he must’ve not been one of the few innocent parties. He tried to close the conversation with, “I’ve already moved on from this…” I hadn’t moved on from it, and I still don’t know exactly what kind of playing around happened in the lunch room. But once I got what I felt was sufficient information he did close the conversation with, “It’s okay. Even good kids have to sit out sometimes.”
Puma Is Life.
My child is obsessed with Puma. I blame my mom. (She introduced him and also feeds his need! Thanks mom! *Not sarcastic. Actual thanks.) But it’s not what you think. He has no idea of what a name brand is or what quality clothes are. He literally likes the cat. He is an aspiring Wild Kratt. (I told him he can’t be a Wild Kratt because we aren’t Kratts – which led to a big discussion on if the Kratt brothers are actually brothers in real life or if it is for the show. I can hear him now, “I mean, I know they call each other bro and they call themselves ‘the Kratt brothers,’ but I don’t think they’re actually brothers.” These are exhausting conversations to have with a 5 year old.) If you ask him what his favorite animal is, sometimes he will just answer, “Predators.” But he has an affinity for big cats. And now it’s Puma or die. (This picture is perfect – Puma shirt + adventure gear. Watch out big cats.)
Never Change.
I hope that as my biggest baby boy gets older and does leave me for college (or the Amazon or whatever), he’ll still remind me of this sweet kinder baby. It has been amazing to watch how much he has grown in the last year.