Choices are good and bad

We had a tough decision this year when it came time for “back to school.”

For three years, Sawyer has attended preschool at Holy Trinity, which is where we also go to church. He has friends there who have been with him every year. All the teachers know him, and we’ve gotten to know many other parents and families there.

It’s a community to which Sawyer belongs — therefore, we all belong.

But it’s only a half-day program.

We debated moving him when I started working days in December, but I felt like it was unfair to yank him out of his preschool world just because it was more convenient for us. So we added afterschool programs to stretch his school day to 3 p.m., and Ray endured those two (sometimes rough) hours with Sawyer at his office until I could pick him up. We made it work, but it was far from ideal.

Photos from first day of Pre-K at Holy Trinity Day School

Holy Trinity operates on a traditional school calendar, so classes end for the summer in May. We had no choice but to find another option, at least for the summer.

We chose the Early Childhood Center, a place I thought would never match up to Holy Trinity. I believed it was safe, convenient and suitable, but I felt like it would lean more toward being a day care, where the kids played all day, than educational.

How wrong I was. I LOVED Sawyer’s summertime program at ECC. They went on dozens of field trips. Some were as simple as walking to Center City Park two blocks away and having a field trip or playing in the fountains. Others involved van rides to the sprayground, the butterfly farm, a pizza place and a farmer’s market. They also had all sorts of cool programs come to the school. Once a sheriff’s deputy came and explained how they use science to help solve crimes and fingerprinted the children to teach them how each person’s fingerprints are different. They had other science visitors, made flubber, tie-dyed T-shirts and did so many fun things. It was like summer camp — at a day care.

The only thing I hated was the lunch packing — you are required to send a protein, vegetable, fruit and grain EVERY DAY — but I even grew to appreciate that after awhile. I knew that Sawyer was getting a better lunch that he usually did, and the options really opened up when I could send things that needed refrigeration and reheating.

The hours and location were PERFECT for us. We could drop Sawyer off as early as 7 a.m. (not that we did), but it didn’t have to be 9 a.m. on the dot like his regular school. And we had until 6 p.m. to pick him up. So if I needed to work a few minutes late, I could still get there in time. And ECC is just a block away from the Grasshoppers stadium, so we occasionally went straight from preschool to the ballgame.

As we usually do, Ray and I switched stances on the issue. Back in December, I was the one who was adamant that we keep Sawyer with his school and his friends. By the end of the summer, I was ready to switch to the new school, and Ray was convinced we should keep him with his “community” at Holy Trinity.

It’s so hard figuring out what’s best for your child. There are endless variables in this world, and it’s never simple to decide which ones are going to matter most when it comes to their well-being and happiness.

In the end, we did what we usually do — went with the most difficult, complicated solution to the problem!

We decided to do both schools.

In the mornings, Sawyer will be in the pre-K class with his Holy Trinity friends, many of whom he’s known since he was only 20 months old. He’ll get to “graduate” with them and finish out his preschool career where he started.

In the afternoons, he’ll be shuttled over to ECC to spend several hours with new friends and his familiar teachers. I’m a little worried about how well he’ll fit in to this class, only because he’s about a year older than most of the kids.

The biggest downside to all of this is the shuttling. Unfortunately, Ray nixed my idea of teaching Sawyer the route and letting him walk. (It’s only about 4 blocks.) So I am stuck picking him up every day at lunchtime. Occasionally, I will have a meeting, appointment or lunch date that conflicts with pickup and Ray will do the swap. But it’s largely going to fall on me.

I’m not convinced it’s actually the best move for Sawyer, but hopefully, it will teach him to be flexible and expose him to different people and situations than just one school would. I guess we’ll see whether it forces him into therapy one day.