Isaac's social life

[mamajoan]

One of Isaac's preschool friends is leaving next week. He's Hawaiian and moved here with his parents last year so that his mom could do research at Harvard for her doctorate. Now she has to go back to the university in Hawaii to teach for a semester to fulfill the terms of her fellowship. So the little boy and his mom are going back to Hawaii, and the dad is staying here so he can continue to work at his job. They'll be coming back next summer and I guess the kid will be going to kindergarten around here.

Anyway, it's one of Isaac's favorite kids, so he's having some trouble dealing with the fact that Hi'ia is leaving. He keeps asking if we can get on a plane and go to Hawaii too. (Don't I wish!!) I even overheard him telling one of the other kids at school that "I'm leaving with Hi'ia!" Ugh. Well, of course I've been trying to explain that Hawaii is very very far away and that we'll miss Hi'ia but unfortunately we won't be able to visit him, but he'll be back in the summer, which of course also feels very far away but will be here before you know it...I don't know how much of that Isaac is getting, but who can say.

Then the other day Isaac told me that another of his friends Anouk "is leaving just like Hi'ia!" Anouk is another of his favorite kids, so I was like, oh crap (LOL) and asked him where she's going, and he said she was going to "oh - why - uh" which eventually I figured out was Ohio, LOL, and figured out that Anouk is just going for Xmas to visit her grandma, not for months and months like Hi'ia. (Anouk confirmed that for herself yesterday when I saw her and she was WAY excited because apparently they're taking the train to Ohio. She was like "seventeen hours on a train! WOOHOO!" and her dad was like "seventeen hours on a train! kill me now!" LOL) Clearly, though, Isaac does not grasp the distinction between these two kids' upcoming departures, so it's going to be a tough one to explain. They're both leaving this weekend.

In related news, I realized the other day that Isaac is going to be out of preschool for almost two weeks. His school is having their "holiday party" the Friday before Christmas, and they'll close early that day; then they're closed the entire following week; then the week after that, they're closed Monday and Tuesday (New Year's Eve Day and New Year's Day) and then Wednesday is Isaac's day with his grandma. So by the time he gets back to school on Thursday Jan 3rd, it'll have been two weeks minus one day.

Yikes. We are all going to go In Sane during that time, if we don't find some stuff to do with ourselves. OY.

So I guess it's time to be calling some of Isaac's friends' parents and see if we can set some stuff up. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that the two aforementioned friends are going away, because they'd be the first ones I would try. Alas. Anyway, there are plenty of other kids, so I guess I better get crackin'.

Comments

[ww1614.livejournal.com]

You're always welcome down my way. ;) We'll be gone for a few days around Xmas and we may have my SIL visiting for a few days, but it's a looooong break.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

When do children start school? Children here start school at age four.

[lasayla.livejournal.com]

I think it's like, six or seven in the US. Something old anyway.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Well, it varies by area, and also it depends on what you mean by school. In most districts, a child must be 5 to start kindergarten. The cutoff date varies a lot though. In some areas it's December 31st, so the child would actually be 4 when he/she started. In most towns in our area, it's August 31st or September 1st -- the child must be 5 by that date in order to start kindergarten that year. In some areas, the parents can choose to hold the child back a year and not start him/her in kindergarten until the next year, particularly if the child's birthday is very close to the cutoff date. Isaac's friend Anouk is in this situation; she turned 5 in late August and is not going to kindergarten until next year, when she'll be just over 6.

A lot of towns also have preschool, also called pre-K, which a child can enter at age 4. I could have put Isaac in the public school's pre-K program as of this past September if I'd wanted to. But I didn't think he would really get any value out of it that he wasn't already getting from his current "preschool" (which is really a glorified daycare, although they do have a curriculum). I think that the public-school system's pre-K is more useful for kids who have never been in any kind of childcare situation with other kids (i.e. who have been home with mom, or with a nanny, etc.) and need to be eased into the school "paradigm" before they get thrown headlong into the shark-infested waters of kindergarten.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

We're going through the whole loss-of-friends because of school. We've already lost a couple (fortunately not best buddies, though) to pre-schools because parents wanted to make sure they got into a particular school. And this coming year, the whole class is going to disperse. The kids talk about it, but I don't think they have any idea what it really means.