"They are so young ..."
Today I was chatting with a mother who has two kids the same age as mine - our daughters are in the same grade and our sons go to the same Montessori school / daycare.Her boy will be going to kindergarten this September. Jason is not eligible because his birthday is on 02-October-2006, 2 days after the cutoff date of 30-September-2006 mandated by the province of Quebec - children must be 5 by this date or they go the following year.. This is a real irritant for me, because in any other province in Canada, he would be eligible for school (the cutoff date in other provinces is 31-December). The only exception is getting an exemption from a psychologist which states Jason is mature enough to go to school. I took him for such a test last week. It was a disaster, Jason simply would not cooperate with the psychologist, he was much more interested in doing his own thing and not listening to the psychologist. I knew this would happen - JJ takes after me a lot. Nevertheless, I feel JJ is ready for school and that keeping him out another year will be detrimental - he needs the stimulation he will get from school.
Anyhow ... back to my story. I asked this mom if her boy was going in September, she said yes because his birthday is in September. I told her that JJ was not eligible because he was born two days too late. I also mentioned that I am seriously considering taking him to Ontario and enrolling him there. She looked surprised and said, "They are so young."
Yes, they are young, but this does not stop her from sending her kid all day to a daycare despite the fact she neither works nor studies. She is a stay at home wife - like most in this particular part of Montreal. When people find out Sofia is working (outside the home) they act surprised as if to say, "Your husband doesn't make enough money to let you stay home?"
[Yep, yet another shameless pick of JJ. Image copywrite belongs to me.]
Comments
Even thought the cut-off in BC is Dec 31 and my daughter's b-day is in Nov still chose to keep her back a year.
I had been a room mom for my son's kindergarten class and the kids with the late b-day's were just not as ready as the older kids. When you have only been around 4 or 5 years 10 months makes a huge difference.
When he does go he will be way ahead of the other kids and will love kindergarten.
colleen: doing something useful is, I believe, important for the emotional / mental well-being of people. Being occupied with a 9-5 job is not, in my mind, a great way of achieving this (other people differ - Sofia loves it). My main gripe was that this woman was saying how young the kids were, yet she sends them off to daycare everyday so she can do whatever she does (I don't know, maybe she volunteers somewhere - but I don't think so). The trick to helping kids in school is to do their homework with them (which is hard when you're out wokring all day). We never spend enough time with our kids when they are younger.
MIO: nice to see you back. And, yep, he got his curls from me (but he got the color from his mom).
over here, its 31Dec for kinders and 01Jan for 1st graders; e.g. those born on 02Jan99-01Jan00 get to start school.
most people think one works for money; when there's much more a person can get from work-life besides money. ;)
Quebec has quite a lot of differences with the rest of Canada (not withstanding language). For one, it manages its own immigration seperately.
Fun comparison between Quebec and Singapore
Area
Quebec: 1,183,128 sq Km land, 1,542,056 sq Km total
Singapore: 683 sq Km land, 693 sq Km total
Population
Quebec: 7.6 million
Singapore: 4.4 million
GDP per person
Quebec: US$29,600
Singapore: US$29,700
Population density (based on land area only)
Quebec: 6.5 people per sq Km
Singapore: 6442 people per sq Km
Number of people you could squeeze into Quebec if we had Singapore population density: 7.6 billion. So the world’s population could comfortably fit in Quebec (assuming you find Singaporean population density comfortable – compared to 25,800 per sq Km for Manhattan) and leave the rest of the world void of humans.