We took our first mom and baby yoga class when I was still counting my son’s age in weeks. Because the instructor was also a preschool teacher, the small talk on the very first day revolved around the process of enrolling kids in preschool. Her main message was that we not wait – we should get our babies on wait-lists months, if not years, before we wanted them to start school.
This is a bewildering situation, given how mysterious children can be, and how long it may be before their personalities, abilities and learning styles come to light. I’ve looked and asked around casually, comfortable that he’s probably best off at home. But in the past three months, Declan has revealed his incredible ability to memorize and retain information. As the year began, he mastered his shapes in one week, colors in another, the next he was counting to twenty and identifying numbers up to nine pretty handily. He forms sentences about subjects that I don’t remember talking to him about in the first place. Yesterday, we took a walk in a park. As we started up an incline, he repeated “walk up hill!” over and over. He’s blowing my mind.
Just a few months ago, the periodic visits with kids at library reading hour, COSI and the park seemed like enough outside stimulation. Today, I’m having a hard time finding any preschool with programming for children under three – I was hoping there might be one that just does a half day or two a week for that age nearby, but no luck.