The Kindergarten Conundrum

So something happened while we were living in New York.  Something serious.  I was semi-aware of it, but because the task of helping two preschoolers film a movie required my full attention, I managed to push it out of my mind by telling myself I'd deal with it when we got back home.  Except that now we're home.  Now I have to deal with it.  And now I'm fighting the gut wrenching urge to become totally panic stricken.  As of this moment, I am only panic stricken- not totally panic stricken.  But I fear I could take a turn for the worse at any point in time. 

If you're wondering what on Earth could have me in such a tizzy, I'll tell you.  It's kindergarten registration.  It started while we were in New York.  By the time I got home, nearly all of my friends had their kids registered.  Jon has always told me that we've got five years to make any decisions about the boys going to school. Now I'm a month late.   I feel lied to.  Cheated.  All this time I've been busy making other important parenting decisions, thinking I had five long years to make this one.  Surprise!  Time's up.

I've struggled with school decisions since before the boys were even here.  Because of when they were born, we knew the boys would have that on-the-cusp birthday in regards to starting kindergarten.  At that point we wondered if we'd start them at barely five years old or redshirt them a year and wait until they were nearly six.  Knowing what we know about education, we decided- rather easily- to hold them back a year.  But then when they were about 18 months old we started to realize that maybe holding them back a year wasn't going to be possible.  I didn't panic though, as Jon reminded me that we had years until we had to decide.  The entire year that they were two really opened our eyes and we knew that school choices were going to be difficult, but we still had years until we had to worry about it.  Shortly after they turned three, we had a psychologist tell us that finding the right way to educate our boys was going to be really difficult.  Thanks for the vote of confidence lady.  But we still had years to worry about that.  Didn't we?  Last spring we decided we'd at least better start doing some research.  We knew that our five years were counting down, but it still felt like we had time.  Jon and I researched and studied dozens of school options, narrowing down our best choices and making visits to each.  We met with some wonderful people at some wonderful schools- schools that might be a wonderful fit...  for someone else's kid.  But not ours.  We have learned so much from our boys in the last four years, so much about our boys.  So much about how our boys learn.  And we've learned that there isn't really a right fit for them.  But we still had time to find it.  Until now.  Now it's time to register.  Applications are due.  Spots are filling up.  Deadlines are about to pass.  I was supposed to have five years before we had to make such decisions.  Instead I returned home from New York to feel like I've been slapped across the face... my five years are apparently up. 

Here's the thing about our boys- put simply, they don't learn in a normal way.  It's hard when well meaning people say they understand, that this school or that school works well with "different" kids, that a good teacher will get them to conform.  The truth is, even in the worlds of education and psychology, very few people actually understand how our boys' brains work.  It's ironic that we as a society have come to call such a conundrum "gifted", because it often feels like the very opposite of a gift.

For one, our boys don't learn sitting still.  In fact, they are actually incapable of doing so.  Not only can't our boys sit still, they learn with their whole bodies.  Not in a regular "kinesthetic learner" kind of way, but in an "I've got to use the entire house and hang myself from the ceiling" kind of way.  When we read a page in a book, just one simple page, they have to stop and act out the information in order to process it.  The other night we read about a sculpture called the Spiral Jetty in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Next thing I know every single thing in my entire house that wasn't nailed to the floor had been requisitioned for use in the boys' re-creation of the Spiral Jetty.  We also have a Spiral Jetty shoveled out of the foot and a half of snow in our front yard.  Ask them anything about that damn sculpture and they'll blow you away.  Mind you we only read about it once.  Unfortunately I'm pretty certain no kindergarten teacher is going to allow the boys to reposition 30 desks, 30 book bags, and orchestrate the involvement of 28 other five year olds to recreate each lesson they learn.  But learning with their bodies isn't the only thing that worries me.  In fact, it isn't even my biggest worry.  My biggest worry is the intensity.  The passion.  When the boys want to learn something, they are consumed by it.  When they wanted to learn to golf, every single waking moment of their lives was spent learning about golf.  For eight hours a day, we golfed.  After awhile, people driving by our front yard on their way home from work would stop to ask if we had really been out there since they left for work eight hours earlier.  We had.  And the boys were only 18 months old.  When they wanted to learn about geography, we studied maps for hours and hours on end.  It was all they could talk about.  Everything looked like a map to them.  A piece of cheese looked like the shape of the state of Georgia.  They could both munch an apple slice into the shape of Florida with the exact precision of an expert cartographer.  Each and every interest has been the same- the boys' brains insist on submerging themselves- and in turn, us as well- in whatever topic is currently of interest to them.  It is exhausting actually.  Jon and I can barely keep up.  There's no way we could expect someone teaching a classroom of 30 kids to keep up, or even tolerate it.   Right now the boys' passion is architecture.  They could tell you more about architecture than you would ever want to know.  Trust me on this, because I have learned more about architecture than any normal every day adult would ever need to know- and then some.  This is how the boys learn.  And it makes them happy.  This is how we want them to continue to learn.  They don't need repetition.  They don't need something to be explained in depth.  They simply need a prompt followed by the time and space to thoroughly explore something.   They simply aren't going to do well when reading takes place at 9:15 and then at 9:45 they have to stop reading to do math and at 10:30 they have to switch to science.  They won't be happy.  It's not how their brains work.  I would like to think they'd adjust, except that a close friend of mine whose twins are eerily similar to ours just played this out.  My friend found a wonderful public school with a gifted kindergarten program- something that is virtually unheard of- but her sons are miserable.  In kindergarten.  Even in a self-contained gifted classroom, they can't learn the way their brains are wired to learn.  And no child should be miserable in kindergarten.  Or in school for that matter.  At least not until junior high when its a prerequisite to be existentially miserable.

There is a school I've been dreaming of for awhile now.  Actually, I used to dream about it.  I had to stop when I was forced to face the fact that it was never going to be even a remote possibility.  It's in Los Angeles.  Jon and I have actually tossed around the idea of moving out to California for about a year now.  We lived out there for a month and a half one summer and loved it.  I have family there and after spending a summer with them, I've missed them with my whole heart ever since.  And for awhile we figured it would be fun to give the boys a chance to really try acting while they are still young, while being a twin is still an incredible advantage for them.  That and the fact that I'm just ready to get out of Michigan.  But we haven't done it.  It's a huge decision.  We hoped that this role the boys had in New York would help us really figure out if acting is something the boys want to do.  To be honest, we fully expected for it to show us that they don't.  We figured it would be too much and that the boys would decide half way through that it wasn't for them.  We didn't expect what did happen- that they'd love every single second of it.  So in addition to coming home to the fact that we've got to make a decision about kindergarten, we've also got to make a decision about how much we're going to commit to this acting thing.  Please excuse me while I grab another cup of coffee- the stress of it all is about to drive me over the edge!

So on top of school decisions, we've got this gigantic, life-altering parenting decision to make.  I wish we could just ask the boys. It feels like we should be able to ask the boys.  For the better part of each day, they act like they are twelve years old.  And if I had twelve year olds, I certainly wouldn't even consider moving them to Los Angeles to continue acting unless it was something they desperately wanted to do.  But I don't have twelve year olds.  I have four year olds.  The boys say they want to live in California and keep acting.  Ten seconds later they also say they want to live in the late Jurassic period and be two in a herd of Diplodoci.  Turns out, no matter how mature they are at times, you can't rely on a four year old to give you a straight answer about anything.  Certainly not about things influencing life altering decisions like moving across the country.  So Jon and I are left to decide.  The boys love acting.  I just wish it was that easy.  They also love peanut butter and separating Legos with their teeth but we limit the former and condemn the latter so I can't exactly justify doing something just because they love it.  When we sit down to really explore what the boys love about acting, we're stumped.  They certainly love acting- at least roles that they connect with like the one they just played.  But do they love it enough to want to do it all the time because they have this uncontrollable passion for the art of acting?  Let's be honest.  They're four for crying out loud.  But here's what I do think I have stumbled on.  I think the boys love acting in part because they have peers.  Having peers is going to be a tough thing for them and it is hard to put that into words.  Surely they have same age peers and they enjoy playing with them.  But the boys don't have many intellectual peers.  And by that I mean someone who is interested in pretending that the playground is a Saturn V rocket blasting off for a lunar mission, or someone who wants to draw six dozen pictures of the Taj Mahal, or someone who is even remotely interested in talking about how deep the foundation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was supposed to be given the marsh-like soil it was built upon or who wants to discuss the structural similarities between the London City Bridge and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.  But when they're acting- they are with people who will engage in any and all of those things.  Except that they are adults.  While they were filming in NY, not only did the boys have a semi-captive audience that was willing to discuss the Taj Mahal with them, three different "friends" pulled up pictures of themselves actually at the Taj Mahal to show the boys.  They were in Heaven.  I know its weird to think of such people as peers, but they were and that made the boys remarkably happy to be in that environment.  So even if that is partially why they love acting so much, is that reason enough to invest in it?  And if it is, do I dare start dreaming of this perfect school in Los Angeles because it would really kill two birds with one stone? 

My gut says no- that neither are possible.  Jon already works his ass off to make ends meet and I tried planting a money tree out back but it doesn't seem to be growing with all this frickin' snow.  I'm not even sure if this one particular school is as right for the boys as it feels or if it is truly in anyone's best interest to let the boys continue acting.  In fact, I'm a little unsure of which way is up and which way is down at this point.  What I do know is that I am scared.  I'm scared to think that our only choice is to homeschool the boys.  Like, for real.  Despite the fact that we are starting to add fractions, this year has just been "preschool".  What they learn or don't learn is rather irrelevant so long as they learn to love learning.  But at some point they've actually got to start learning in a logical fashion and the thought of that being 100% my responsibility is starting to feel very overwhelming.  So is the idea that I am going to be the boys' main "peer" for the better part of an entire year.  Because while we've had the boys involved in gymnastics classes and tap dancing classes, no one there really wants to talk about why airplanes fly or when China's newest skyscraper will out measure the Burj Khalifa. We have play dates with friends, but the boys usually complain afterwards that no one wanted to pretend to be Frank Lloyd Wright and it hurts me to see that they are serious about that- and sad because of it.  So that leaves me, and for ten hours a day, only me.  And that is starting to feel like an unbelievable amount of pressure.   I can't help but think that two or three days a week at this super special school in L.A. wouldn't be good for all of us.  Or at least if we homeschooled in LA, parts of some days would be consumed with auditions and work- which is enough to stimulate the boys' minds and momentarily take some of that pressure off of me.  While I know the boys would have stayed in New York to continue acting and they would have been very happy to do so and they would be equally as happy to do so while living in California, I can't help but feel that somewhere deep down I may have some semi-selfish motives in that I would love the little breaks it would provide from my responsibilities as both mother and all encompassing educator- roles I'm suddenly fearful that I can't adequately fill.  And I'm stuck because I feel like these two life changing decisions are intertwined with one another and we can't make one with out making the other but we don't know which we're supposed to make first or how we're supposed to make it. 

Jon always says things will work on in their own time.  I guess I just thought we had more time.  Welcome home Paddock Family.  Welcome home.