Decisions, decisions, preschool edition

Last week, I sauntered into Christian Co-op Preschool and enrolled Gus in the Monday-Wednesday-Friday class. Then I promptly began to freak out. Gus, you see, is not your typical child. His, let's call it spirited, personality has me concerned about how he'll fit into a structured (well, as structured as preschool can be) environment.

To make matters more complicated, my youngest has an August birthday, so we had a decision to make: sign up Gus for the 3-year-old class or the 4-year-old one, when he will have turned 4 just weeks before the start of school. Big G is at once bright and immature. He loves books, is brilliant at putting together puzzles, can identify the letters of the alphabet, upper and lowercase. On the other hand, he has a hard time sitting still. The one time I've put him to the test in a semi-structured setting, a tumbling class at the Y last fall, he didn't do so hot. He wanted to do his own thing, wasn't at all interested in participating in organized activities.

I have a little bit of a complex about this all. Mark and I want to make the right choice here. With Ben, we should have followed our instincts and had him tested to enter kindergarten a year early. My gut tells me that the right choice for Gus is to put him in preschool next year, 4K the following year, and kindergarten when he turns 6. But guts can be wrong, or can give you two divergent messages, as with Ben when we could tell he was gifted but also believed that boys overwhelmingly do better when they begin school older. Wonder of wonders: all kids are different.

I'm trying to remind myself not to get too worked up about this (you can tell it's working, right?). It is, after all, only preschool. Ultimately, we decided to put Gus in the 4-year-old class, and we'll see how it goes. We could always move him to the 3-year-old class. My hope is that Gus will adjust to it, even if it's a little bumpy at first, and then his teacher, whom we know and trust, can help us make the right decisions from there. I've been a parent long enough to know that kids can be completely different at school than they are at home. I was, after all, the girl who was mouthy and difficult at home, while all my teachers told my parents I was "cooperative and courteous." Gus may just surprise me after all. If not, though, I'll be the one slipping out of preschool red-faced.