To Preschool or Not to Preschool????

There are 2 things that relieve stress for me….one is working out (and I need to do more of this).  The other is, and always has been, journaling of some sort.  My mom can attest to this.  I have boxes of old notebooks from when I was a teenager.  All full to the brim with the scribblings of a young girl trying to sort out life.  I’ve let the journaling slip in the past few years….enter kids…and list making, all kinds of lists, has taken its place.  But that is NO FUN!  This blog has always been a nice little outlet for me.  An electronic journal of sorts.  So, this dusty old thing might see some action over the next few months!

Topic of the day…making decisions, hopefully good ones, for your kids.  We’ve been in this place of entertaining the idea of Marley NEEDING preschool for the last 6 months or so.  She started acting out a bit at daycare and at home.  At first, I just chalked it up to her being 3.  Which, for the record, is SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than being 2.  But then, as time went on, I wondered if she might be a little bit bored.  Ready for some more age appropriate challenges.  We LOVE our in-home daycare.  I cannot stress that enough.  Marley has flourished there.  But the demographics have changed.  One of the older girls if off in kindergarten and another is in preschool, preparing for starting kindergarten this fall.  That leaves Marley as the oldest…and not that it would be a problem for all kids.  I know her personality and can only assume that her “center of attention” attitude can dominate the daycare setting for the younger kids, Jax included.  With that being said, Trav and I both agree that Marley would do really well with a more formally structured day.

To make a long story short, we started looking at our options in the area.  We had a few REQUIREMENTS that had to be met in order for us to consider moving Marley (and these requirements further limited our options).  Here’s what we MUST HAVE:

1.        A location that is close to their current daycare (as Jax would be staying put).  We didn’t want to be driving all over the city at the end of the day trying to pick up 2 kids and get them home.

2.      A location that preferably had preschool and an all-day care option (because we can’t leave work mid-day to get her from preschool back to her current daycare).

3.      Comparable prices to what we pay now, though we understood that we’d likely be paying more because of adding on the preschool piece.

We landed on Blessed Trinity in Richfield.  The school met all of our requirements and has a great preschool program for 3 year olds, followed by a 4 year old program as well.  They have what’s called CUB CLUB…an all day daycare program that preschool students can go to.  It really is a perfect fit for us!  And bonus…it will introduce Marley to a Christian/Catholic school setting.

But now we need to decide some of the more specific details…like, do we send her to Cub Club only on Mondays and Fridays when she has preschool, keeping her in her current daycare Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday???  Or do we just enroll her in Cub Club full-time and take her out of her current daycare entirely???  I’m constantly second-guessing my parenting decisions, re-evaluating how I came to those decisions, and questioning myself.  How do I know if it’s the right thing for Marley?  How do I know what is best for her?  Am I rocking the boat for no reason at all or is preschool necessary?  Change is just never easy and I always worry how Marley will react to the change.  I feel like I’m asking too much for her to just dive in and LOVE her new surroundings, if we do decide to move her.  But on the other hand, I feel like I’m doing her a disservice if I don’t give her the tools she needs to grow and be challenged and learn.  After all, she’s not going to make these decisions for herself! 

So, here we are…..at this crossroads.  I’m sure this is just the first of many difficult parenting decisions we’ll have to make, and maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill.  How do you all go about making big decisions for your kids?  Do you think preschool is a must?  How can you tell if they are ready??

Only posting this because it's funny....kids....so dramatic.  These two are never on the same page!  One happy, one sad.  One hungry, one not.  Oy vey....gray hairs, here I come!