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Fork in the Road Co-Parenting

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Kindergarten is well underway and well while the Monkey continues to make awesome progress, I am worried. Like any Mom new to school age kiddo life, I am hopeful that things will indeed not be as awful as I feared before he started.

Why the fear? Why the anxiety? Well there’s the thing…

Not only does the Monkey come from a ‘broken home’ but his Bio is also historically terrible at handling schools. As a kid he was medicated early for ADD and thrown in RSP and no one bothered to advocate for him. No one. And so, he has a classic chip on his shoulder about more than the fact that we disagree about how to educate the Monkey on food habits. And for this reason, I worry more about that, then whether or not we agree on the right type of milk to buy.

Monkey has a wicked imagination filled with superheroes and songs, that he makes up to go with every story. And this has spilled over into his new kinder experience. He loves to pretend and engage with others, but he is just not the best with his timing. But if I ask him to tell me his sight words without looking he can before the week is even over. The boy got Mama’s smarts. Praise Jeebus. But he also got my flair for storytelling and make believe. In kinder, I got in trouble for daydreaming and making things up, but my teacher was good enough to figure out that was how my little mushy brain functioned and she rolled with it. My fear is that like his Bio he will pigeon-holed before he learns how to deal with teachers. Before he learns timing. And with the Bio’s knack for alienating preschool teachers from the past I worry that he will build walls against this new teacher too.

As a young one, I learned that if I did my work and got through the lessons that the teachers would let me be creative at other times during class. Art was my outlet when I was a kinder. Playtime was my time to shine. And now, I’m learning to teach the Monkey to keep the imagination, that we love so much, turned down to zero until the appropriate times. The Monkey has done well learning timing since September, and I’m proud of his efforts. It’s weekends with the Bio that cause ripples in our pond of progress. The lapses in discipline that teaches the Monkey respect and situational understanding.

I suppose I am not the first Mama to struggle with a kiddo who has a whole other world in their little noggin. I know I am not the first single parent to come across this fork in the road and wish the co-parent would follow the same path. I saw it coming. I knew it would eventually be an issue. Mostly because the Bio and I butt heads on so many things, and how we discipline the kiddo has a lot to do with how he handles himself in certain situations. But as my Mama used to say, ‘a challenge in life is simply an obstacle, not a wall…just find a way to go around it and success is not far off’.

We will find a way to work around this…anyone else had the same kinds of issues with co-parenting and educations struggles?

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