Not a Wasted Word

I’ve written a lot about my choice of school for my daughter. I think I write about it with a certain amount of conviction; we value language education and diversity and chose our daughter’s school in accordance with those values.

I worry sometimes, actually, that I sound a bit smug when I talk about my daughter’s school. Oh look at us, we’re upper-middle class white parents sending our daughter to a school where our white daughter is (very much) the minority, where 92% of the student population qualifies for free or reduced-priced lunches, where the district runs a free after school program to ensure the economically disadvantaged families have access to the services they need.

The truth is, if I do sound smug, it’s because I’m trying desperately to convince myself that we’ve made the right decision, that we’re doing what is best for our daughter in sending her to that school. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder if we’ve made a significant mistake, and that our daughter is suffering for it.

The truth is, not a lot of parents in our position chose to send their kids to a school like the one our daughter goes to. I’ve always known that, but a few recent encounters really cemented for me that we are the outliers, and had me questioning our choice.

I wrote in October about the Kindergarten information nights I attended as a parent representative for our school. I talked to quite a few parents who are enrolling children in San Francisco Unified School District next fall, and I realized pretty quickly that our school was not what they were looking for. What they were looking for were high API scores and how much money the school raised. Evidently there are elementary schools in San Francisco that raise over $300,000 a year! I honestly had no idea. Just like I had no idea that parents actually used that kind of information (how much a school fundraises) to choose where to (try to) send their child.

$300,000 a year of fundraising is an absurdly high amount for a school like the one my daughter goes to. It could never raise even a fraction of that total. 85% of the families qualify for free lunch. That means they are living off of less than $31,000 a year (for a family of four) in what is right now considered to be the most expensive city in the country. Another 7% qualify for reduced-price lunch. It is not the kind of school that pays for its arts program or remodel with fundraising.

I have endured many a sleepless night wondering if we made the right choice sending our daughter to a “social justice” school. Will she be challenged enough? Will she have ample opportunities to pursue art, music and sports? Will she be getting the kind of high-caliber education needed to excel in high school and beyond?

If you had asked me a month ago if we’d made the right choice, I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Now, after the election, I have a renewed conviction that we are doing the right thing, and a renewed appreciation for the cultural and economic diversity of my daughter’s school. Sure, she may get a better “education” at a school that raises $300K a year, but she probably wouldn’t have friends who look different from her, and she probable wouldn’t graduate with a such a deep understanding of, and appreciation for, other cultures.

Also, she wouldn’t speak fluent Spanish. 😉

I can’t say I still don’t worry that my daughter won’t miss out on some of the bells and whistles the more “well off” schools have to offer, but I can say that I’m proud of our choice to buck upper-middle class white convention and send our daughter to a racially, culturally and economically diverse school. If Trump’s election has taught me anything, it’s that we all need more exposure to, and understanding of, people who are different from us. If there is one thing I can be sure my daughter will get at her school, it’s that.

It turns out Christmas is already upon us, even though Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened yet.

I’ve been on a shopping ban for the past two months, so I guess it’s not surprising that these past few days the pendulum has swung a bit far in the other directions. Three steps forward, two steps back, and all that. The good news is I’m pretty sure I got it out of my system.

I’m having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit. I started thinking about Christmas cards, which I didn’t sent out last year, but I’m considering sending out this year since I haven’t been on social media for over six months and a lot of family and friends haven’t seen or heard from me in a long time. Then I realized that I didn’t have a decent shot to use if I did make a card, so I started planning a holiday picture. In the end I decided on something that I got kind of excited about, but now that I’ve started to execute it my enthusiasm is waning. I’m not sure I’m even going to make a Christmas card, but I definitely need a good holiday shot for the ornament I make every year, so the picture is happening no matter what.

I just can’t seem to get excited about reaching out to other people right now. I have absolutely no desire to do so.

{Side note: Being off social media has absolutely affected the number of photos I take of my kids. I used to have about a thousand a month to download off my phone, now I have 100-300, and very few of them are very good. I’ve been totally fine with that, in fact my husband and I have started a fun game where we try to send the silliest, worst photo of our kids to each other, which always makes us laugh. But now I have to make the 2017 calendar and I’m panicked that I won’t have enough good shots to include. Next year I need to make sure I take at least a few good ones every once in a while.}

I’m already dreading the present part of the holiday. My son is already losing his shit about the toys he wants, and he just had a birthday! My daughter is much better about that kind of stuff now, and as long as she doesn’t set foot in a store before Christmas, she probably won’t be too bad.

But I’m already fielding questions from my parents and in-laws. Can we get your daughter this crazy watch?! Can we get your son this catapulting train set? Ugh. I want the answers to be a resounding NO! but then I sound like a scrooge. Maybe I am one.

I am enjoying purging the kids toys in anticipation of all the new shit that will come in. I packed one big garbage bag of stuffies and two grocery bags of other toys and plan to take them to the Young Families Resource Center on Tuesday. Yay for less stuff!

I guess it’s good that I don’t want to think about presents. Maybe then I won’t go overboard buying them.

I wish we could focus more on giving back, on volunteering and helping those in need, but I think even my daughter is still too young to be legitimately helpful. And I don’t know if I have it in me to deal with her whining on top when the whole purpose of the exercise is to embrace gratitude.

I am excited to put up our tree, and I have plans to make some old toys into ornaments, which puts a smile on my face. So there are some positives to look forward to. But right now, they feel few and far between. Even Thanksgiving feels like a chore, with all the chaos in my family right now, I’d honestly rather avoid it all together.

So yeah. That is where I’m at. Sorry for the downer post. I’ll try to put up something more uplifting tomorrow.

My daughter has nightmares. A lot. Most nights she wakes up at least once. Some nights she wakes up two or three times.

It’s not enough for us to go into her room and assure her everything is alright. She wants someone to climb into bed with her, and preferably stay there until she falls back asleep (which can take up to an hour).

What she really wants is to sleep with us.

I don’t want to sleep alone! You and daddy get to sleep together! Why do I have to sleep by myself?

It’s a fair question.

We have never been a co-sleeping family. I move around a lot in my sleep and was always scared I would hurt my kids (or worse) when they were babies (I almost broke my husband’s nose when we were dating, and I did break my grandmother’s favorite antique lamp when I was in high school). If I did bring them into bed when they were infants, hoping to sleep some more precious shut eye, I would sleep only fitfully, never comfortable enough to fall into a deep sleep with them next to me.

Now we have a queen sized bed and the truth is our daughter wouldn’t fit between us. She’s a tall girl and many mornings I find her sleeping upside down in her own bed. To say she’s a fitful sleeper would be an understatement.

Also, my husband snores. Loudly.

When we do share a bed on trips I sleep horribly. She wakes me up constantly with a hand in the face or a foot in the back. It also takes her hours to fall asleep, which means there is no sneaking away when she finally passes out–by then it’s my bedtime too! Sleeping with her makes me crazy.

And yet, I wonder every day, if I’m doing her some horrible, irreparable damage by forcing her to stay in her own bed.

Two weekends ago, after a particularly rough string of nights, I convinced my husband to sleep in my daughter’s room so that our daughter could sleep with me. She was jubilant. And she slept straight through the night, without one wake up.

It was her suggestion to institute a “week off orange or red earns you a night in mommy’s bed.” Last week wasn’t a great week for her, but so far this week she’s on track. I hope she earns the treat for next week.

I worry a lot about my daughter. Why does she have nightmare’s every night? Are her bad dreams a manifestation of some emotional trauma? Is she just really sensitive and easily scared? Does she just really, really want to sleep with me? Is my refusal to allow her in my bed every night being processed as some kind of inherent rejection?

I’ll never know the answers, at least not until it’s too late.

At the end of the day, I’m just tired. And need a good night’s sleep. Is that too much to ask?