Treat Him Well

Today was my son, Joshua's, first day of kindergarten. I have had a particularly difficult time coming to terms with his venture into the public school system. We’re blessed to live in a good system. We’re thankful to hear good things about his teachers. It isn’t that he has just started going to school, because he has been going to a private preschool for nearly two years now. So what is it that is so difficult for me?

I think, for me, kindergarten represents a beginning to the end of his innocence. For five years, I have been able to manage his influences. Now he’ll feel the full force of peer pressure. My baby is growing up and that’s a difficult pill to swallow for some parents, including me. The following excerpts from a poem that was written about a little girls first day of school applies here. I have changed the she’s to he’s and her’s to him’s. I have changed some of the wording to make it fit my son.

Dear world,

I bequeath to you today one little boy with two twinkling blue eyes and a happy laugh that ripples all day long. I trust you’ll treat him well.

He’s slipping out of the back yard of my heart this morning and skipping off down the street to his first day of school and never again will he be completely mine.

Frail and proud he’ll wave his young and independent hand this morning and say “Good Bye” and walk with big boy steps to the school house.

Now he’ll learn to stand in lines and wait by the alphabet for his name to be called. He’ll learn to tune his ears for the sounds of school bells and deadlines. Now he’ll learn to be jealous and how it feels to be hurt inside. Now he’ll learn how not to cry.

No longer will he have time to sit on the front porch steps on a summer day and watch an ant scurry across the crack in the side walk. Nor will he have time to pop out of the bed with the dawn and kiss the lilac blooms in the morning dew.

No, now he’ll worry about those important things. Things like grades, and which outfit to wear and whose best friend is whose. The books and learning will replace the blocks and cars. Now he’ll find new heroes.

For 5 full years now, I’ve been his sage and Santa clause and pal and playmate and father and friend. Now he’ll learn to share his worship with his teachers, which is only right, but no longer will I be the smartest, greatest man in the whole world.

Today when that school bell rings for the first time he’ll learn what it means to be a member of a group with all of its privileges and disadvantages too. Today he’ll learn for the first time that all who smile at him are not his friends and I’ll stand at the front porch and watch him start out on that long lonely journey to becoming a man.

So world I bequeath to you today one little boy with two twinkling blue eyes and a smile that is innocent and contagious. I trust you’ll treat him well.