Decisions, Decisions

As a mother, from the moment your child is conceived, you have to start making decisions about your child's life. When you're pregnant, you try to make the best decisions for the child growing inside of you. Do you drink caffeine or do you give it up? Do you continue to color your hair or do you let the gray hairs show? Do you eat a well-balanced diet or do you give in to your cravings and eat Taco Bell 3 times a day (sometimes 4)? Do you try for a natural birth or do you insist the doctor give you pain medicine from the moment he announces you're in labor? And after your baby arrives, there are even more decisions to be made. Do you circumcise your son, do you pierce your daughter's ears, do you co-sleep, do you quit working outside the home, do you breastfeed or bottle feed, do you make your own baby food or buy Gerber, do you follow your pediatrician's immunization schedule or insist on spreading them out more, and so on, and so on... I once heard a pregnant friend of mine say that she thought her child's first year of life was going to be the hardest, and all I could think to say back was "Then just wait until your child turns 2 and learns how to say no!" The toddler years open up a whole new world of decisions that you must make as a parent, such as disciplining and punishing your child, when to take the pacifier or bottle away, when and how to potty train, when to take them out of the crib, when to enroll them in preschool, and so on, and so on... And from there, the decisions seem to only get more and more complicated and difficult to make because you know that the decisions you make for your child will ultimately form your child into the adult they will become. These are the decisions that will create the memories they will take with them throughout their entire lifetime. These are the decisions that will shape their faith, their character, their mental and emotional stability, and their overall perception of the world and the people in it. I admire those parents out there who don't sweat their parental decisions. They make them with great clarity and thoughtfulness, and they never second guess themselves. I am unfortunately not one of those parents. I second guess my decisions all the time. I over-think everything. I let myself get tension headaches that last for days and weeks. I think about things over and over, and then I think about them some more, and then I ask everyone I know to help me think about it some more and then tell me what they think too!

Some of the most recent decisions Hector and I are facing as parents involve whether or not we allow Isaac to go into his second year of life still drinking from a bottle at bed time, and exactly what information is enough information to tell Avery when she comes home from school and asks about things she overheard the other 5 year old little girls giggling about on the playground, and which computer games and websites do we allow Samuel at the age of 7 1/2 to have access to. Samuel's a smart kid. He'll read a magazine or watch a cartoon or see a new movie, and he will memorize the websites that they ALWAYS have on there. And then he'll get on the computer, and I'll find him playing some Kung Fu ninja game that I've never seen before where he's trying to see how many times his Ninja guy needs to kick the dragon in the head before it dies! AGH! His latest website "find" involves a computer game where all of the characters have something to do with some type of illness. It's the craziest thing. One character has a car shaped like a nose that shoots, you guessed it, snot out of the nostrils at the "bad guys." Another character is a grandmother figure who's car is in the shape of a large stockpot, and she gets to fling chicken noodle soup from a big wooden spoon at the "bad guys." Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? Well, apparently the creators of a very popular cartoon on PBS think that this game is great for children, since they publicise it all over their station during after school cartoons. I guess they think it's good since it teaches kids about health...

But the decision about whether or not we should allow Samuel to shoot snot out of a nose-shaped car seem so trivial lately :-) because Hector and I are being faced with an even bigger decision: What school should we send Samuel to next year? It would seem that the local Science and Math Gifted and Talented Magnet School has reviewed Samuel's grades and test scores, and 2 weeks ago they sent us a letter because they wanted us to know that he has been "pre-qualified" for admission for the next school year. Hmmm... Up until last week, I never even thought about the possibility of sending Samuel to another school next year, let alone a Science and Math Magnet School. And so, if I've spoken to you about this in the past couple of weeks, I truly thank you for listening to me and giving me your opinion, because I am sweating this decision. And I say "I" because Hector is one of those amazing parents who does not sweat decisions like this. But because Hector and I make most of our parental decisions together, I am unfortunately the only parent left to make up my mind... I'm taking Samuel tonight to the school's open house. I am hoping that once Samuel and I are actually in the school and meet the teachers and staff, that Samuel and I will just know what we're supposed to do. At least, that's my hope!

My inner mommy voice is saying "Don't fix it if it isn't broken." He's doing really well at his current school, better than I ever could have hoped he'd be doing. He knows the teachers, he's made a couple of friends, he's comfortable there, and he likes it. Why would I even consider taking him away from that? Well, I'd take him away from that because he has an opportunity to attend an even better school, with even better teachers, and an awesome curriculum, one that would be geared towards his gifted areas. I'd take him away from his current school to allow Samuel to have an amazing educational experience. I'd take him away from his current school because he might just realize that he has a gift, and he might just find some really amazing friends who are a lot like him.

I never want to regret this decision. And so I ask for your prayers as I search my heart (and mind) about what I should do. This is not the first difficult decision I've had to make on Samuel's behalf, and something tells me it won't be the last...