italian, all day long

This is the year Maddy would start American kindergarten.  We have access to an American kindergarten with excellent kindergarten teachers.  I've seen one or two in action;  it's a place I would like for my kid to be.

Except.
Except, Except, Except.

She makes her way to school with her dad on September 2.

She missed the actual first day of school because she vomited during the night.

I later realized that the vomiting was due to anxiety.

We both strongly believe that she needs to learn the Italian language, to know the Italian people.  We know that the only way that this will happen is if she attends Italian schools.  She certainly won't learn any Italian worth speaking from us!  Instead of starting kindergarten this year, she will remain in the Italian system; she is in the final year of the Italian preschool or asilo.  

This choice of an Italian education, my friends, is no easy task, for a host of reasons, the least of which is our less-than-stellar Italian skills.  (Actually, our language skills are a little better than the average bear, at least of the American bears that we know.)  Perhaps I'll blog a bit more about what makes this choice difficult as the year progresses.  One example was the start of school.  Maddy was enveloped with intense anxiety -- anxiety that had never before surfaced, anxiety that led to sleepless nights & vomiting, anxiety that made me rethink my "I believe this is best" confidence, anxiety that caused crying and clinging as we dropped her off each day at a place she has attended since she was about one year old.

 Upon arrival, she removes her shoes for slippers or non-skid socks,

a task that she is finally able to complete on her own.

Finally at the end of the week, she confided:  "I don't like going to school because at school I have to be Italian all day long."  She speaks Italian.  She speaks it well.  She has even begun to read a bit in Italian.   She does not speak it as well as the other six (yes, I wrote "six") Italian children in her class.  For Maddy, this is a huge problem.  It's just Maddy, her little five-year-old personality.   What can I say -- it's in her genes.  It bothers her when she doesn't understand a word or when she can't speak as quickly as the others.  She doesn't realize that all the other kids don't understand all of the vocabulary of adults or story books either.  Like any child she sometimes stutters or has to search for words or phrases in English, but this just doesn't bother her like it does in Italian.

She is five, so she finds absolutely no consolation in the fact that she is able to communicate in two languages.  We do.  We carry on. We deal with a child who is sometimes unhappy to go to school, to school where she has to be "Italian, all day long."

Weeks 2 & 3 have been much better, by the way.