Waldorfessori v. Public

I don't want to say that things were easy for my parents when my sisters and I were small, because they weren't!

But some of the decisions about which activities we'd participate in and when, how we'd be educated, etc., those were perhaps a little simpler.

For example, I took gymnastics classes at the YMCA as a kid. But there was only so far I could go with that, both because I wasn't very good and also because there were no equipped training facilities around. I took dance classes for years, once a studio opened up in town that wasn't intimately tied to the child beauty pageant scene. My mother had one gymnastics program, one dance school to choose from! I played a musical instrument - starting in 5th grade when they were introduced in schools. I played lots of organized sports - but just t-ball and softball over the summers until junior high, when school sports were introduced and I choose volleyball, basketball, and dance squad/drill team. (I stuck with the music and the volleyball, later adding in golf. The rest eventually fell by the wayside.)

But now, there are so many choices! And if you don't have your preschooler in the right programs today, she might not be able to compete with her classmates and teammates later! How do you even know what the options are, let alone what your child would actually enjoy doing later, at such an early age? And why does it all have to be so difficult?!

I am a product of public education, K-12. Rah rah rah! And I went on to a highly ranked private university! On academic scholarship! Which I kept for 4 years, whereupon I graduated and got a job! Success!

But. Might I have done better if I'd been otherwise prepared? I did very well in high school, and had parents who were both both highly educated and highly involved with my life and education. Yet I was not prepared for college. I saw how easily some of the kids from private high schools took to life away at university, and I was jealous.

In my town, my parents had a choice: public school or Catholic? We're not Catholic. (Plus, the small Catholic school couldn't offer nearly as many resources as the larger public school.)

But my children and I currently live in a much larger community with a dizzying array of educational choices. Public, private, parochial. Montessori, Waldorf, special focus/magnet.

Is public education still the best? Shouldn't the children attend the same school? Is the same solution right for both of them?

Might not Ellie really benefit from a close-knit, bonded classroom like that found in a Waldorf program, where the focus is on age-appropriate development, development of imaginative play, and learning as a group/unit?

But might not Ada feel frustrated in that environment and want something different and self-paced, where she can indulge her fascination with rockets/shuttle launches/flight? And dinosaurs. And butterflies.

At our local public elementary school, kindergartners do yoga, therapy services are integrated into the classroom when possible, and third graders are taught violin. So maybe that is best for both children, after all.

And it is free, a not-trivial-consideration.

But as a parent, how do you deal with the pressure to make the right choices for your children when they're too young to decide on their own? How do you deal with the guilt of wondering if you've chosen rightly or wrongly, if you're doing enough, if they're involved in too many activities, or the wrong ones, or not enough of them, if later your children will wish that you'd done something differently and you'll look back and think, of course, it's obvious, I should have done that right from the beginning?

One thing I know for sure; I will not be homeschooling. I would not be good at it. I would hate it. (And therefore so would the children.) But most of all, I wouldn't be able to handle the constant and crippling guilt that I was making the wrong decisions and doing everything wrong!