Preschool Parent Competition

I find it very different being a preschool parent than a teacher. For one thing, I kind of feel like I am involved in a competitive environment against my will. Benjamin's preschool is fantastic. I love the teacher, and I love the fact that I get to be very involved in the classroom. I get to be a "Mom teacher" about twice a month. It is a great environment for him. He loves to go and asks everyday whether it is a preschool day or not. Now for the parent competition, I can for sure live without that.

We have parent education credits that mean we have attend in order to attend the school. The other morning there was a meeting about power struggles. I casually in the discussion talked about things that I do at home like create time together to do projects. I shared some simple ones that I do and that they are really child centered. There were only a few mothers in attendance at that meeting. I also talked about tricks that I had learned from others to conquer things such as getting up to early, defiance in cleaning up toys, etc.

To continue the story, every morning at preschool there is an opening time where the children can bring something to share. Everyone can bring something every day that revolves around the theme, this month's is fall, brown, or the shape of a square. So the sharing time is very short. Benjamin loves to bring sharing and has usually planned his sharing way in advanced. We make sure that it is in his backpack to take. Moms can stay for this first fifteen minutes of sharing and I usually do. Sometimes we do bring things that we have created in project time together so our sharings are sometimes a bit more elaborate and often child created like a collage, the halloween bat we made, etc. Another mother who was in that meeting also has started having her daughter bring more things that were child created like a brown apple seed taped to a paper and labeled "apple seed." I was actually thinking hooray for her. Well on Wednesday, I overheard another mother talking about Benjamin's mom and this other little girl's mom and that we are just trying to "show every one up."

At first, I wondered if I had at all portrayed the things that we were doing at home in a way that was offensive or inappropriate. I questioned letting him take anything that we make at home anymore. Then, I was offended that she would make a comment like that loud enough for us to hear. But that feeling soon dissipated, and I just felt bad for her. I have been at a place in life where I thought that because someone else was doing something and I was not, that I was getting shown how lousy I was as a person.

I realize that everyone might not have the knowledge that I have gained from formal education, but there are ways to spend time doing things with your children. I have made spending time with Benjamin during project time a priority. Our projects are sometimes fancy, like this past October's projects, but others are certainly not. In fact, all of the Halloween projects wore me out a bit, and we have focused on simple ones like stapling and taping paper scrapers (which my son has loved having an almost endless supply of tape.) I view this not as something exclusively mine, but a choice that anyone can make. Priorities seem to dictate life. Where are priorities lie is where our time and energy goes. I think that we all make choices everyday. I don't think that mother is probably at a place to hear this, but if she were, I would like her to know that I will continue to choose to make spending time with Benjamin a priority in my life and that this privilege isn't exclusively mine.