Raise a happy, confident, compassionate and empowered daughter

you’re happily agnostic, atheist some days, depending on the news headlines, and your seven year old asks to go to church? I’m stumped.

Little legs and arms pumping, a smile taking up her whole face and her hair blowing back in the wind. Happiness. I took her to a vast open field and said “Go!” It was getting dark and we came across a dragon castle along the way. Yeah, I didn’t know dragons lived in castles either. They couldn’t catch her though.

Learning to hit

All net, with a little help from Ryan!

And I found an introductory sports program for 3-4 year olds that is in the morning, which means I don’t have to worry about heat exhaustion, so I signed her up for that too. The program spends two weeks each on soccer, T-ball and basketball, so we’ll see if she’s a sporty girl or not, and if so, she’ll know which one she likes the best.

It’s not fair to keep her cooped up in the house during the summer just because I like to be a hermit and suck up the air conditioning, so I’m really happy I have some activities lined up for her. For physical and artistic balance, I am considering a pottery class she can do during her school’s summer program. She’s game for anything, really.

She has taken a lot of dance classes, but not in a while, and now I’m thinking she should try something different. I’m looking at gymnastics, because she took a program when she was two and loved it. It starts next month so I need to get over there and register her.

Team sports would be great, like T-ball or soccer, but not while it’s so hot. Winter would be better for both of us. It’s not highly unusual for kids on the football team to occasionally just drop dead from the heat here, so no thanks.

Starting this fall, she’s eligible for the free voluntary pre-kindergarten our state offers all four year olds. But the Montessori school she attends is not a provider, so I would have to take her out of a school we like and where she is doing well and try something unknown.

It would save us several hundred dollars each month since it’s free. But the curriculum would be uniform, and from what I’ve seen of it, it’s stuff she’s already learned (letters, numbers, colors, shapes, writing her name). Her teacher says she is on track to be reading before she enters kindergarten, and I strongly suspect that momentum will not be continued if I put her in a program less individualized to her abilities.

I’m not interested in pushing her academically, especially at such a young age. I’m never going to demand she bring home perfect grades or anything like that. It’s just that she’s highly motivated to learn, and I want her in an environment that challenges her and encourages her to learn at her own pace, not the pace the state determines is adequate.

Plus my friend told me that if you are lucky enough to find a good school, you had better keep it. So I am happy with our decision to leave her in the private school. I believe it is what is best for her. It is more important than the money. And her teacher is wonderful. She’s one of those people you can just tell really loves children. And that’s priceless. It was difficult enough for me to turn my baby over to people I basically don’t even know. I don’t want to deal with that stress all over again.