You know. Sigh. Just a minute. Composing myself. OK.
You know, I know as well as anyone that parenting is a tough job. Try as you might, with all the best intentions and stacks of advice books and lion-strength love, you make mistakes. You just have to hope that your missteps are not overly grievous and your naturally-resilient child goes on to thrive and only occasionally reminds you of that time you made her be a pig in the 4th grade play and then she was forever known as "Pig Girl" at school. Ouch, or rather, snort.
However, some mistakes are completely preventable, provided you aren't a giant asshole. If you are, perhaps you decide that it is in your child's best interest to sue the private preschool she attended for providing TOO MUCH PLAY. Manhattan resident Ms. Nicole Imprescia, mother of 4-year-old Lucia, filed suit in State Supreme Court against York Avenue Preschool last week, accusing the 19K-a-year school of failing to adequately educate her daughter. Imprescia's claim goes on to say that Lucia was improperly prepared to take the ERB exam, which is a test given to very tiny children to assess intelligence and achievement, and used as an assessment tool for elite private kindergartens. TOO MUCH PLAY! I'm guessing here that Lucia either didn't make top marks on the ERB and/or didn't get into the top Manhattan kindergartens as her mother wanted, and SOMEBODY IS GOING TO PAAAAAAAAYYYY!
Poor Lucia. If her mother had properly prepared herself to be a competent mother, she would have taken heed of the advice from every single credible child development specialist on the PLANET, which is that the business of the toddler and preschooler IS PLAY, and it is the very best way for them to learn and grow. You can force-feed an accelerated curriculum down their tiny throats, sure, and sometimes you will get a child who can read, recite pi, play a violin, and impress all your friends with practicing pre-algebra at 5 years old. IF their brains are ready. IF they are not, you won't. And even if you do get the high-level results you wanted, it's because you've removed natural ways of learning and supplanted them with inappropriate rote and rigor. You've taken the first step into turning your human child into a societal robot. But that's OK, because it really isn't what's best for your child, as much as you cling to that ridiculous belief. It's to prove your own superiority. And by god, you may not even deny that.
These are my hopes for young Lucia:
1. That her mother scrapes up the "family donation" money to buy Lucia's way into a private elementary school on the East Coast which costs 30K+ a year, via building a gymnasium or some shit;
2. That Lucia continues on to one of the East Coast elite boarding schools, at double that cost;
3. That Lucia is accepted into Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Bard, Wesleyan, or Vanderbilt, which in another 14 years will surely be far far far more expensive than the 53-58K they were last year;
4. That Lucia decides to attend most-expensive law schools, Columbia or Yale, and;
5. That Lucia then decides to take a legal job with the ACLU and marries a misunderstood artist with food in his beard, body odor, and very dubious credit.
Not everything can be micro-managed and sent to State Supreme Court, Ms. Imprescia.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman