The First Day of School

19 August, 2019 is Teddy's first day of Kindergarten. He went to preschool last year at The Childhood League Center on the Ft. Hayes campus. If you're looking for a preschool for a kid in the area, I highly recommend it. The quality of care and education there is amazing. They run their class with half kids with developmental issues and half without to do peer modeling. I still see some areas where Teddy is a bit behind, most especially how he understands how his body movies. We've been trying to play Frisbee this summer because from the ruins of my parents' shed, I managed to salvage the Philmont Frisbee that went around 60 miles through New Mexico with Jason and I when we were kids. Teddy thinks it's awesome, but he has trouble throwing the disc. He tends to throw backhand, because that's how it looks to him when someone throws to him. He reverses the movement. He does well enough to get without 5ish feet of his target more than 50% of the time, but it's not the same control he should have. But the difference between this summer and last summer, both in terms of gross motor skills and socialization is huge. So, seriously, if you're looking for somewhere, I cannot recommend the Childhood League enough. Great environment, great teachers, great staff.

But tomorrow he starts his first day of normal school. Kids develop at different rates. If you look into it, you find all these charts that say "At this age you child will..." and then there's a list. Those lists are approximations. They're things the median kid will do, but even kids without developmental glitches don't do all those things. Teddy was saying his ABC's at 2 and doing addition at 3 and multiplication in 5 languages before he was 5. But he couldn't walk down the stairs with a reciprocating gait (left foot on step 1, right foot on step 2) until this winter when they worked with him at the Childhood League. The swings are a little wilder for Teddy, one way or the other. And so I wonder what his first day and year of school will be like. He'll have to explain to his peers why they're looking at his heart with echoes. He'll have to get more comfortable in his body, moving in a less deliberate way than he does. He'll have to slow himself down to explain to the other kids why 5 times 5 is 25 and how it makes a square. Tomorrow is a big day - Teddy will take his first big steps into the wide world on his own and he'll have to start learning about so much more than what we can teach him. Knowing Ted, he'll love that. I can't wait to hear from him all about it.