School of anxiety

LUCY. IT'S TIME TO have a panic attack, tour some schools, talk to a million moms, talk to a couple of dads, look at online reviews, attend school presentations, fill out paperwork, look at different neighborhoods, get a realtor, check out mortgages, go look at houses, drive through neighborhoods  REGISTER YOU FOR KINDERGARTEN.

All over town, moms and dads of 4-yr-olds are breathing into brown paper bags because HOLY CRAP, this parenting shit is getting REAL! It is time to make a decision for which SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES will follow.

Do we send you to our neighborhood hipster school? Beloved by student and family but completely foreign in concept (chickens, no desks until 3rd grade!) to your parents. It is 2 blocks away.

Or do we pay the big bucks to send you to an immersion school (yes, I'm still Spanish obsessed)?

Or do we move across town where we are promised better schools which our minds must equate with better lives and futures 20 years into the future?

Really, it all boils down to one question: do we trust the world to take care of you? 

It seems to me, we have these three options.

1. Yes. We trust the world and the community and enter to it with open arms. Wherever you go, you will be fine.
2. No. The world will hurt you. Proceed to move off the grid and homeschool you in a cave somewhere.
3. Um? Have a complete panic attack, spend years trying to control your environment, and then finally be forced into choice number 1. It's a trick because, kicking and screaming or not, trusting the world to take care of you is our only real choice.

I'm a #3 parent, all the way. I want to be the epitome of calm acceptance and trust. Deep down, I know that there is no controlling the down-the-road consequences I want to control. But instead I'm clinging to this panic attack with every fiber of my being. I'm pretending I can get you into the right school with the right friends that will give you the right education and the right experiences and prolong your innocence and help you be well-rounded and smart and accepted and happy and successful and talented and loved and (what-the-heck) rich and all things wonderful.

But is there another way? YES!

Yesterday, I talked to a #1-er. She's in our neighborhood and happy about the public school choice. "It's pretty much the same everywhere," she says. And my brain is rewinding the seconds to hear that again. Did I really hear that? Is she being - dare I say...REASONABLE? Wow.

And then I realized why that line of thinking was such a shock. There are some big reasons.

• I went to 3 kindergartens (partly because my siblings were struggling with school choices and I got towed along) and a couple of different elementary schools after that. There were real differences in the quality of education offered.
• Two of my siblings and one of Jeremy's take their kids to charter schools to beat their own neighborhood school odds.
• Most of my friends either commute long distances to take their kids to school, have moved to go to a different school, put their kids in private schools or ALL THREE.
• Does anyone love having their kids in their local, neighborhood school? ... I am not sure.
• And here is the whopper - the Portland School District on-time graduation rate was 59% for 2011. No that is not a typo; it is a travesty.

Seriously. That is some messed up evidence.

Really makes me long for comfort in that #1 choice, a world where everyone trusts their child has an automatic chance for a GREAT education.

Sigh.

xoxo,
Mama