Civil War

This isn't part of the original programming. You don't look at the end of the baby book to see the section where you and your partner fight about your child's schooling. As in REALLY fight. With the big relationship guns being brought out to play.

My mother-in-law said to me, "The two of you will never fight like you will fight over this baby." Of course, in my pre- and even post partum delusions it seemed a crazy thing to say. Fight? Listen lady, I am doing my level best not to burn the house down and run away. I can't even control my breasts, let alone think about fighting.

To be honest, it wasn't until we hit kindergarten that it became really obvious that Em - quirky little Em who just rolled on people and licked them and was a tornado of activity, never sleeping, never slowing down - was maybe a little "atypical". Sure, I had noticed that the child had zero interest in writing, or coloring, or slowing down long enough to even look at an alphabet, let alone sing a song about it but in my global world view of the individual differences in children, it was no big deal. Honestly. It will come. It always came - maybe not when the parent was expecting it, but it came.

Nope. Never really came. Sure, it bits and pieces they trickle into place, however there is no ease there. Every academic step is made by walking through molasses with both she and we sweating from the exertion at the endpoint.

I had to give over my vanity at some point. I think it was after the brain injury was diagnosed and I was crying  in bed that I had ruined her. I had condemned her to this terrible fate. She would never go forth, she would never leave home...and College?  HAH.  What I had to come to terms with - over and over, it seems - is that Emily is NOT ME. I have no right to force my view of her life onto her, but rather have to help her achieve the things SHE wants, things that SHE wishes to pursue.

Terrance, it appears, has never made that important cognitive break.

Our argument started as part of a conversation. Terrance was talking about someone he had met who had asked him his views as an American living in Quebec ( Post script - Please, for the love of all that is good, DO NOT ask my husband this question. It makes him all crazy macho American and it drives me insane)

Terrance, true to form, was railing about this and that - from taxes, to language laws, to education policies, to road conditions. I was blithely indulging as much as I could bear until he said this:

"Of course, Emily won't go to CEGEP - She will take extra classes in the summer so she can graduate early or go straight to University - or I will send her back to the States for the final year of High school..."

My vague indifference to his rant morphed into very alert attention.

"What? Why wouldn't she go to CEGEP?  What makes you think she won't WANT to go to CEGEP? And Summer classes so she can graduate early? How are you going to know what she even Wants to do?"

and like a match igniting the bomb, we were Off.

For two days we fought about this. His point, summed up here for you, was that taking summer classes for a couple of hours in the summer days, would give her the option to Not go to CEGEP, if she wanted.  Otherwise she could go straight to the University of his choice, in either country. Because by doing this in the States, HE had graduated at 16.

My point? That it was asinine and arrogant to assume that he could or had the right to plot her higher educational future. That our job, as her parents, was to assist her in what SHE wanted to do, be that stay in high school Here and attend CEGEP, or decide she wanted to attend summer school and obtain extra credits. At any rate, this was Her decision to be made and She is NOT HIM.

Of course, at this point he decided to revisit the decision to keep Em in Kindergarten for a second year..telling me how wrong it was, how he never agreed with it, and how I coddled her and denied her the right to really be in 6th grade...how me and all my other "education" cronies forced him into a decision he disagrees with to this day.

And so, we were off, onto this past tangent of questioning my professional judgment, my mother judgment of what is best for Emily...all rolled up into one prickly ball of fun.

Much later, Emily told me that she had heard what we were fighting about. Normally, I remind her that adult worries are adult worries and that it is not her job to rehash that territory. This time, though, I asked her opinion. Was it the right decision to keep her in Kindergarten for the second year? Did she feel as if she Should be in 6th grade, was she ready for that?

"Yes", she said. Yes. I made the right decision. She is in the right place.

I will stand by her, where ever she goes and how ever she needs to get there. My daughter is not me. Her path is not mine.But I can walk next to her. Maybe occasionally hold her hand, if she lets me.

This is an original Canada Mom Blogs Post

Dawn pontificates at her home blog, I am Doing the Best I Can while herding the cats at True Wife Confessions She also is about to finish her comps ( for real this time, I promise - 18 pages done! ) in the Education Department at McGill University, where she has been in the PhD program since 2006.