Our Baby Started School

barrettes: Gymboree

shirt: old navy skirt: old navy

I enrolled our two-year-old at a little kids’ school this past week. It’s only twice a week. Why? She is at the age now where she wants and needs to be with other kids of her age. She’s gotten quite social in the past half year and gets very excited to play with kids.

She became attached to my hip especially since we moved to Jakarta. It’s normal because she’s in a new environment and have spent a lot of time with me alone as I don’t know many people who have kids of her age. I drag her everywhere when I have errands. Now I have two days with 4 hours in the morning when she’s going to be in school and it makes me feel better to do stuff that doesn’t cater to her needs and I can do that without feeling guilty.

So what school, right? Well, this may surprise you. It’s a French school. I didn’t plan it originally. I wanted her to go to a Japanese school for her to learn Japanese, so I actually looked at one Japanese school as well as a local English-speaking school run by Indonesian. I liked the Japanese preschool, but in the end, I settled with the French school for various reasons.

Moms factor in many elements on decision-making for their kids’ school; locations, tuition, teachers, environment, quality of education, etc. In our case, it was a bit complicated. I won’t bore you with details. To make a long story short, the main reasons for me to put my second child in a French school is that 1. her best friend here who is also our neighbor and whose mom, a Senegalese, is my really good friend, goes to this school, 2. it seems like a fun place for my girl to be and she liked it and 3. the teacher/founder of the school is wonderful and cares children with love. There are a ton of toys and as soon as she walked in, she went straight to a room with a kitchen and started playing with her friend. What else do I need to see?

My main goal of sending my second daughter to a French school is not to teach her French. My goal is to let her brain get stimulated by being in a little more structured environment than being with me and by interacting with other kids. This place is for small kids to play and that’s great. My daughter wants it. My friend’s daughter and mine are the oldest there, but I don’t need to put my 2-year-old in an educational environment yet.

By the way, I speak French because I went to a language school to learn French for 6 months in Washington, D.C. with my husband before we went to Senegal for his job assignment. I felt comfortable sending my daughter there for this reason. It’s been 5 years since I had spoken French, so my French has gotten really rusty, but speaking with my friend, Anne-Marie, here helped me revive my French. I love it.

This is my big news for this week. I hope you have a great weekend!