Live Like a Kindergartner

Living Life Like a Kindergartner

Being the mother of a Kindergartner has been awesome.  Finally past the terrible twos, troubling threes, and the I-don’t-want-to-nap-but-I-can’t-be-happy-all-day fours, our five year-old, Ethan, is a delightful species.

Ethan is full of life this year: full of wonder, learning, friendships, creativity.  He knows that he can’t do everything by himself, but also has such a strong desire to try new things.  Watching him talk about his friends and eagerly attack his homework has been so inspiring that I’ve made this my year’s mantra: “live life like a kindergartner.”  Here are the major components:

1) Be friends with everyone.  I think I’m pretty good about not having any enemies.  If asked which people I hate, I honestly would not name a single person and I don’t think anyone would name me either.  But not hating, and being friends with are two totally different things.  This year I would like to focus on being outwardly friendly to those I come in contact with daily.  I would like to be more profuse with my compliments, more engaged in casual conversations, and in general a bigger, more positive influence to those who really could become my friends.

2) Reading is fun.  I got this one down, but can I just take a moment and saw how amazing it is to see my son reading books on his own.  It is so rewarding to know that all that work--all those pages of books read every day for the past five years--is truly paying off.  I know that kids who emerge from childhood as strong readers have a much higher chance of succeeding in life than those who don’t.  I’m so very grateful that Ethan is on the right path.

3) Learning is fun.  I could call absolutely anything “science” and Ethan would gladly partake in it.  No matter how gross, how time consuming, how strange the experiment is, kindergartners love to learn new things.  As a teacher you would think that I pursue new knowledge all the time, but unless it really comes my way on its own, this isn’t always true.  So this year I’m challenging myself to read one non-fiction book this month in an effort to be continually learning new things.

4) If it is bad today, have a little cry, give yourself a band-aid or a dessert and then move on.  Tomorrow will be great!  

5) Always have something to look forward to. In Ethan's class they must do a lot of work with Calendars, because he is always counting days towards something. There are field trips, holidays, parties, events with grandparents, projects...just about anything exciting he looks forward to. I used to be like this too, with a trip somewhere in the future that I could plan and get excited about. Somehow though, in the craziness of surviving this life and of squeaking by without much money, I've stopped really planning for fun things. That needs to change--even us poor, stressed-out people need something to look forward to.