Kicked Out of Kindergarten

First Day of Kindergarten, August 2010

 The general consensus in our house before Ella started kindergarten was that there was great potential for her to get kicked out.. this thought process was based on her preschool experiences.  Ella attended many (too many to count but just to estimate I'm going to guess 5, may have been 6, I try not to think about it).  Needless to say, she not only did not get kicked out, she is a kindergarten super star.  It is past midway through the year and she has never had a timeout, and on top of that she is the top kindergarten reader.. what? oh yeah, I said it, top!

Excerpt from the school news letter:  

Accelerated Reader News 

The top 3 readers from each grade are

 
Kindergarten                       First                            
Ella Fritz                              Jack Kronsberg          

Jonathon McDaniel            Ella Drew Dodd           

Sora Shirai                          Daniel Barney  

           
Maybe it's not necessary to show proof, but believe me, had you been living with this child for the last 6 years, you would want to see it in writing too.  It's not that I ever doubted her intelligence, I just doubted her ability to respect and listen to her teachers.  But she has, so not only is she smart, she's also well behaved (not perfectly behaved, but she's definitely become a good kid).  So why my need to share this information.. it's a measure of guilt.  I talked smack about this little girl of mine for years and years.  Complained and solicited advice and asked for help.. it was years of relentless misbehavior and tantrums.  I had one teacher let me  know that people were going to tell me there's something wrong with her, she assured me there wasn't.  This was the same teacher that wrote me an awful letter telling me that families were threatening to pull their kids out of her school because of Ella's behavior, she was 2 years old at the time.  I went to one parent -teacher conference when she was 3 (different school than when she was 2) where the teacher had glorious things to say about her intellect, but when I asked her to be honest about how many tantrums she was having a day, she said - Well.. Today she had five.

I shouldn't have started, I'm going down the wrong path, because I've decided to start bragging about her.  Shamelessly.  Those years of hellaciousness are over, and we worked really hard to get where we are.  I have one friend who always had my back when it came to Ella.  Never agreed with a bad thing I said about her and always defended her.  She still does.  She's one person I feel very comfortable bragging to, she does the same about her son.  It took her 6 years to get pregnant and I feel her gratitude is much stronger than mine.  It's good to have a person like that in your life.

I am grateful for my daughter, I am fiercely proud of her and I am so happy to be boasting.  A lot of times we woman are self-deprecating and we do the same thing with our children.  We're looking to commiserate and know we're not alone.  I took it too far, I was enveloped in it.  I see the light though.. thank you Ella.