I had been checking the mail every day, expecting N's letter from CroMS any time. I anticipated it with completely mixed feelings.
Wanting her to be accepted because....well, who wants their child to be rejected for anything? And knowing that she wants to go there for whatever goofy reason she has in her head.
Not wanting her to be accepted because of the school's overcrowding and because I really, truly hate the system in this district of only certain schools offering certain programs, certain bells & whistles, which ultimately has a "this school is better than that school" effect for both students and parents.
So I opened the letter and she was.....accepted.
I texted D whose response was, "Well shit. What do we do now?" (Which was basically my response.)
I have been thinking about this since we received the letter, which was greeted with screams of glee by N. I continue to think on it even though I signed and mailed the confirmation of acceptance yesterday back to the school.
As much as I wanted to email the superintendent after finding out about the overcrowding in early March, I hesitated. I feared it would cause N not to be accepted, and I didn't want to be the cause of that. Education is political, and I would be an idiot not to believe that a gadfly parent could cause a child to be "overlooked." I can be a royal pita, and who wants to welcome that into their world if they don't have to?
Now that she is in, a letter would be coming from a "concerned parent," I truly now have a vested interest in keeping my kid as safe as possible.
As much as I value my internal "do-anything-to-protect-my-kids" stance, the following things occurred to me in my musing:
1. If we don't allow N to attend CroMS on the "safety" issue and nothing happens (which it probably won't from a statistical standpoint), then we have denied her something potentially great out of fear.
2. I take medication to help me not live fearfully everyday of my life. I try very hard to think things through so as not to live in fear, and I don't want to subject my children to my potentially poor decision-making. (And decision-making based in fear is often that.)
3. The hard truth is that every day of a parents' life is the act of letting go of their children. There will come times, probably many of them, when my children will enter situations that I'm not aware of that will not be as "safe" as I'd like. I will have zero control over these episodes. The only control I have is to prepare my children for how to make smart choices, how to care for themselves when I am not available to do so.
So, long story short---she is going to CroMS. And I'm going to learn how to live with it.
Wanting her to be accepted because....well, who wants their child to be rejected for anything? And knowing that she wants to go there for whatever goofy reason she has in her head.
Not wanting her to be accepted because of the school's overcrowding and because I really, truly hate the system in this district of only certain schools offering certain programs, certain bells & whistles, which ultimately has a "this school is better than that school" effect for both students and parents.
So I opened the letter and she was.....accepted.
I texted D whose response was, "Well shit. What do we do now?" (Which was basically my response.)
I have been thinking about this since we received the letter, which was greeted with screams of glee by N. I continue to think on it even though I signed and mailed the confirmation of acceptance yesterday back to the school.
As much as I wanted to email the superintendent after finding out about the overcrowding in early March, I hesitated. I feared it would cause N not to be accepted, and I didn't want to be the cause of that. Education is political, and I would be an idiot not to believe that a gadfly parent could cause a child to be "overlooked." I can be a royal pita, and who wants to welcome that into their world if they don't have to?
Now that she is in, a letter would be coming from a "concerned parent," I truly now have a vested interest in keeping my kid as safe as possible.
As much as I value my internal "do-anything-to-protect-my-kids" stance, the following things occurred to me in my musing:
1. If we don't allow N to attend CroMS on the "safety" issue and nothing happens (which it probably won't from a statistical standpoint), then we have denied her something potentially great out of fear.
2. I take medication to help me not live fearfully everyday of my life. I try very hard to think things through so as not to live in fear, and I don't want to subject my children to my potentially poor decision-making. (And decision-making based in fear is often that.)
3. The hard truth is that every day of a parents' life is the act of letting go of their children. There will come times, probably many of them, when my children will enter situations that I'm not aware of that will not be as "safe" as I'd like. I will have zero control over these episodes. The only control I have is to prepare my children for how to make smart choices, how to care for themselves when I am not available to do so.
So, long story short---she is going to CroMS. And I'm going to learn how to live with it.
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