The Scholar

Today was Hayden's first day of preschool.

It felt so strange to walk out the door. The last three and a half years of his life flashed through my mind as I drove away. It is still incomprehensible to me that he is really this big already.

When we visited the school initially over the summer, the director suggested we place him in with kids a year older because she thought that curriculum might be more appropriate. When I went to pick him up, I was told by several different teachers there that they have never had a child who could read even close to that level at that school. Not in his class, but in the school. And they have kids who are five years old. They told me he read all the kids' name badges, and they couldn't believe it when he read"Cheyenne." And he read the names of all the games on the shelves, and the titles of the books. She did mention that she was aware of him being so much younger when it came to his attention span. I knew that would be a potential problem. He is so smart, but he is still only three, and acts like a three year old a lot of the time. A three year old who can read and do math and tell time and is basically smarter than me already.

So, I am hopeful that he will mellow out and go with the flow, but that isn't always his nature. He gets very fixated on things, and doesn't like to be pulled away from his current task. It was only the first day, and the teacher was very, very positive. I just know him well enough to know that if he was doing something and it was circle time, he probably didn't willingly go and sit down.

I am finally starting to really believe that regular schools are just not going to work for him. I am doing some preliminary research to see about getting Hayden tested and possibly putting him in a private school's Kindergarten next year at the age of four, because public schools can't take kids under five - no exceptions. He has already been reading for a year, and he has to wait two more years before he is old enough for traditional kindergarten. I can't imagine what level he will be reading by then, and the other kids will just be starting to learn phonics. Once you know how to read, you only get better. And he's reading at like a 2nd or 3rd grade level now. So, we're definitely looking at alternative programs, and gifted schools. None are close by, and none are even remotely affordable.

I think we'll find the right place for him - it just seems like the perfect situation may be to find a school with other advanced kids his own age rather than having him skip grades, and always be the youngest and the smallest.