Suburban Turmoil
“I decided to enroll Jason in preschool this fall,” my friend Becky told me a few weeks ago. “I got up at 3:30…”
“In the morning?” I interrupted.
“I had gotten word that it was a good idea to get there early,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “Real early. Anyway, when I got there at 4:30, it was 19 degrees outside, and there was already a line. The first guy had been there since 10 the night before. The second guy had gotten there at 1:30. And I was almost too late. The guy behind me was waitlisted.”
I frowned. This was the kind of story I’d expect to play out at some posh preschool in Manhattan or Malibu—certainly not outside my neighborhood Baptist church.
“So where are you sending your daughter in the fall?” Becky asked.
“We’re still, uh, researching our options,” I answered lamely. So far, that research had consisted of watching Kindergarten Cop one afternoon on cable TV, but Becky didn’t need to know that. The next day, I looked up a Montessori center in the phone book and dialed the number. I didn’t actually know what Montessori was, but it sounded good.
“I want to enroll my 3-year-old in your program this fall,” I said. “Do you have any openings?” The woman on the other end of the line chuckled at my ignorance.
“No,” she said. “We’re only expecting five openings for fall, and there’s a waiting list.”
“And how long is the waiting list?”
“Right now, there are 70 people on it.”
“Shit. I mean, thank you,” I said, hanging up. I got the same answer at every other preschool. Waiting list. Waiting list. Waiting list.
I was so screwed.
Befuddled, I emailed a mom I know who had once handled admissions at one of Nashville’s most sought-after preschools. Was there, I wondered, some sort of widespread plague that turns parents from sappy, happy baby-wearers to rabid Competi-Parents by the time Junior reaches age 3? According to her, I didn’t know the half of it.
“I’ve received nine-page, typed applications describing how precocious people’s children were, letters of recommendation from Nashville bigwigs on behalf of a 3-year-old, and boxes of gourmet desserts accompanying applications,” she wrote. “On the opposite end of the process, I’ve had conversations in which fathers promised not to allow their wives on campus if we’d just let their child enroll, parents in tears over being waitlisted and one father who promised to include me in a book he claimed to be writing about the injustices of the private school admission process unless I admitted his child. I never did get a copy of that book.”
Wonderful. In this season of Survivor: Preschool Island, it looked like I would be the contestant who couldn’t light a fire, ate too many of the tribe’s bananas and was sent packing on the very first episode.
“Why are you so freaked out about this?” Hubs asked as I read the email back to him. “Put her in Metro’s gifted program. It starts at age 3 and both of the older girls did it.”
“That’s a great idea!” I said, relieved. “That will be so much easier.” I called the program’s coordinator, who promised to send me a packet of information that day.
“Once you fill out the forms and send them back,” she said, “we’ll assign your daughter’s case to a psychologist for review.”
I hung up, dismayed. A psychologist? What the heck would my 3-year-old have to say to a psychologist? I imagined her squirming on a couch while a Freudish-looking man sat before her, taking notes.
“What is your earliest memory?” he’d ask in a thick accent, adjusting his round spectacles.
“My renembery?” she’d say. “Mmmm, I renember… lollipops?”
He’d frown.
“Mmmm, maybe… horses!”
He’d shake his head.
“Pee pee!” She’d shout, cackling at her own remarkable wit. “Pee pee, poo poo, pee pee, poo poo! Ha ha ha ha!”
Clearly, it was time for the left side of my brain to take over. After all, I had something most other young parents don’t: teenagers. Every day, I watch both of my stepdaughters get up way too early, spend eight hours at school, come home exhausted, do mountains of homework and ridiculous projects involving Styrofoam pyramids and shoebox dioramas, eat and go to bed.
The school system already had taken my two older girls away. Why, then, was I in such a rush to hand over another one? In a couple of years, she’d have to go to school, whether I liked it or not.
With that in mind, it looks like preschool is definitely out. I’ll still fill out the mountain of forms sent to me by Metro (although the questions asking if she plays chess or enjoys almanacs make my scalp itch); its pre-K gifted program is mercifully only one day a week. But if she doesn’t get in, so be it.
Of course, if your child is accepted and mine isn’t? Don’t expect me to speak to you ever again.