Guilt

School is starting soon.

Alexis will be in Kindergarden this year.  She will likely be the youngest in her class.

I want to say that making the decision to send her was hard, but it was not.  It was a combination of finances (won't have to pay daycare and preschool for her anymore...), her academic progress (which has been GREAT over the past year.  She would be bored in a third year of preschool.), and the advice of her teachers (who I most definitely leave the educating to.  I make a lousy teacher...I subbed for a year and that is a year of my life I will never get back.)

Despite the fact that I am solid on this being the right decision, I feel guilty.  As though I am taking my very very anxious child and throwing her to the wolves (appropriate for a blog called "Sheep Among the Wolves, I guess).  I feel as though I am forcing her to grow up faster than for which she is ready.  I feel as though by sentencing her to be the youngest in her class, I am sentencing her to a life of always playing catch-up.  That she will somehow be even more disadvantaged in life.

I have been feeling this more and more lately.  I even mentioned to some friends how I sometimes feel guilty because we can't afford all kinds of private lessons and whatnot for our kids.  Hell, at this point we can barely afford our bills because my hours have drastically reduced at work.  I always, constantly feel as though I am somehow shortchanging my kids.

It appears to me, though, that a lot of mothers feel this way.  It is damned if you do, damned if you don't.  Put your kids in activities?  You are overscheduling.  Don't put them in?  You are going to turn them into obese couch potatoes who just sit and vegetate in front of video games all day.  Start your child in kindergarden?  You are damning them  to a life of constant catch-up.  Hold them back?  You are giving them an unfair advantage and making them be bored for the next year.

When will it ever be good enough?  When will we ever be able to accept that parents do the best job they can?