life skills

i have been doing a lot of preschool research the last couple of months. last year, when it was preschool decision time, i had a lot going on and sleep was not on that list. as such, i chose a school that was close, clean and affordable. the boys like their school and it meets their needs. but i decided to really do my research this year and see what i could find.

for anyone who has not been through the experience of shopping for preschools...it is INSANE! there is a great documentary on the process called "nursery university" that covers several families in manhattan. and seattle is not in the same league...but still the process is daunting. open houses, tours, applications, interviews. and this is once you have narrowed the list down to a reasonable number. and the tuition at some of these places! suffice to say, they offer financial aid.

not surprisingly, i have gravitated towards the hippy end of the spectrum - schools that treat kids as kids. places where the body and spirit are nourished as well as the mind. classes that involve getting dirty and rolling down hills.

my husband is a bit more pragmatic and requested some data on adults who attended these institutions and other like them (for grade school and high school). where are they now? are they happy? are they successful? i forwarded one of the documents provided on to him. his main concern after reading through the  information was that a majority of the students went on to soft sciences, art, teaching and the like. and this concern really got me thinking.

what is success? what is happiness? and is that really what we want for our children?

i think, for a lot of us, success equals money. ok, money and/or power. so, if i go with that definition of success, then yes, becoming a teacher is unlikely to lead to "success." certainly, going to engineering school or striving for an MBA would be a more direct route to "success." but i know that money ("success") doesn't equal happiness. at least, that is what i have been told over and over again, ad nauseam. now, i will allow that money is a sort of life lubricant. that is, it makes a lot of things easier and smoother. but since when was obtaining ANYTHING worth having EASY? and conversely, how much can you value something that was easy to come by? and in my limited, humble experience, the more stuff you have, the more stress you have.

nonetheless, it is very easy to fall into wanting my kids to be successful. well-known in their field, rich, happy and of course, extremely grateful to their parents for all they have done. but i find that as soon as i start thinking down this vein, i start thinking of all the steps along the way that need to be fulfilled for this to happen. and i start looking at my kids in a rather predatory fashion. is he smart enough? how is his hand-eye coordination? does he have what it takes? and so i think what a lot of us want for our kids is not for them to be successful and happy by their own standards, but rather that they end up successful and happy by ours.

i don't mean to imply that thinking about a child's education and future is a wholly selfish venture. i think part of the reason that i am in this quandary to begin with is that i love my kids so much and i want to give them the best start possible to what is hopefully a full and satisfying life. it is just that i am starting to focus on their soft skills a lot more than their ability to start sounding out sentences. empathy. respect...for themselves, for others, for our earth. self-control. passion for learning. and these are areas where i feel i fall short. i can teach them numbers and letters...but humility? patience? being a good listener? ha!

so we are looking at schools that cater to this need. is it cheating to pay someone else to help my children learn skills that i value but do not possess? maybe. is it worth it? i'm banking on it!