ENT / Schooling
So here’s what the ENT said:
“Wow, you have a nasty cold.” - why yes, I do. If someone could explain to me why I get every single disease going right now, I’d appreciate it. I wish he had listened to my lungs and saved me a trip to the doctor, ’cause now I have to go if I don’t improve today (my doctor doesn’t work on Wednesdays anyway).
“I’m still not concerned about the lymph nodes.” - they are there and enlarged, but the general prescription seems to be to sleep more. Although I recognize the validity of this advice, I’m not happy about it.
“Your thyroid, on the other hand, has to be closely monitored, because one of the nodules has grown (from 4 mm to 6 mm) since it was first measured in the summer.” Also, he thinks that probably the anxiety, migraines, etc., is directly related even if the hormone levels measure within normal. He said that a change in the levels might result in my feeling lousy if I were very sensitive. Then he said he is not an expert. So like, WTF?
So there you have it, we’re right back to the thyroid that started the mess. He said he could follow up, but I think I will talk to my GP about possibly transferring over to the endocrinologist. Regardless of who follows up, I have to have my thyroid looked at via ultrasound every 6 months for the foreseeable future.
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Noah did have pinkeye. But the OTC Polysporin drops cleared it up, and he only missed one day of school, which Carl covered.
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I’m working from home today but very frustrated with how my health is impacting my work. I’m just not having a good year, and this is not a good time to be having a bad year. But I am trying to be Zen about it, do my best, and trust that whatever happens happens for a reason. Jobs are drying up in media and I have no idea what I would do instead, but if I get fired/laid off, then I’ll sort it out at that point. I might look into some online programmes.
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Noah has announced that he wants to go to French School. I’m not sure whether he’s just picked up on my talking about it, whether this comes out of something at Montessori, or whether it’s just a fleeting preschooler idea. But whatever it is, I am listening.
If we were going the public route for next year, we would need to register Noah in school next month. We have junior kindergarten here in this province, for a half day, and come September he qualifies.
But Carl and I have pretty much decided to stick with the Montessori for now. Or had.
The logistics of getting Noah from junior kindergarten to another care, whether the in-school daycare (which I looked at and seems fine but is just that - daycare, occupy the kids with whatever), an in-home local daycare, or trying to coordinate some network of people to drive him to Montessori are overwhelming. (The school will not bus him there, fair enough.) Junior kindergarten is fine and good as far as introductions to public schooling go, but I’m not sure Noah needs it.
He’s not some prodigy genius, but he is advancing well. We all know Montessori teaches writing before/alongside reading right? Well my son wrote “vegetabler” on my list last week. (With some help sounding out, but not a lot.) When asked why the ‘r’ he said “s is too hard to write and r is right next to it.” Okay, then. He’s a genius slacker!
I do know that junior kindergarteners are more advanced these days but I also think that given that he’s 8 months away from being of age to enter and is writing out vegetables that it’s fair to say he’s got the basics down. (He’s not yet reading fluently, to be clear. But when it comes to encoding and decoding, he’s doing really well.)
It will be senior kindergarten that is the bear though. Because if we want french immersion we have to choose by then (unless we go private). I do like the “french solution” to asynchronous learning, maybe because it came close to working for me. (I was teased and ostracized socially, but the french did prevent me from horrid boredom for the first few years of elementary school.) I’m a big fan of bilingual education where it’s good.
On the other hand, I taught in what is a good FI school (and probably the one we would move into the catchment area for) and the truth is that the programme has been watered down considerably since the Trudeau days. There simply aren’t enough francophone teachers and so they put teachers in that aren’t super fluent, and then everyone gets lazy and then you end up with a patois sort of education - you’re in a good position to improve later, but your french is iffy.
And our local public FI school is horrible. 6 schools up from the bottom of the list horrible; I don’t go entirely by test scores but if you are that low on them, that’s a total red flag. Our local public english school, however, is great - good test scores and word on the street is very favourable; they had a bad year but they’ve more than made up for it, so I’m assuming it was something weird with that year. Originally when we bought our house I thought I could live with all this but now I’m not sure.
We do have some options; there’s a not-very-local french private school that is barely within affordable ($1800/mo); if my work stays located where it is now there is a french Montessori school that is about the price of daycare now ($1300/mo; I think this one might be a tad pricer) and Noah and I could commute together. Plus, if it’s good — and I think it is but have to look into it further — the whole asynchronous learning thing is not such a big deal. I just don’t know if we would then want to move him this fall rather than fall ‘10.
We could also move into a good FI school area - smaller house would be necessary but the $$ would be going towards equity. Except, of course, that you can’t withdraw from part of your house whereas you can move your child to public school if you have a money problem.
And finally, there is a francophone Catholic school nearby that might be persuaded to take Noah if I personally passed their language test, as one parent has to be french-speaking (they are not thrilled that I did not finish FI, but willing to talk), and Carl would have to prove his Catholicness, but he’s certified. :)
My concerns with any private school option basically boil down to a) fuss and bother and not having neighbourhood friends, and not being able to walk to school which I think is an important part of childhood; and b) continuity. There is no way we could afford that for two kids, for example, or while on mat leave. The further school is only really doable because I work in the area, which could change. There are no guarantees we could afford it year to year. So it feels like we can’t really commit the way you would want to.
And yet, every good year is a good year. I went to private high school and it was a really good thing.
So, I don’t know. I guess I know that a) we can go along as we are for one more year and b) if we want to move, we need to prepare the house for sale. And c) stay employed. So I had better get to work!
(Although if I were unemployed it would be so simple in some ways - the local JK for sure.)
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On the medical stuff, I say patooey. Get your GP to refer you to the best possible thyroid person, stat. And I hope your cold eases up.
On school stuff, I could write volumes, but don’t know if it would be useful. You are running through the myriad options pretty well. We’re a few years ahead of you, on one of the possible paths. Email me if you want the complete ramblings and any possible wisdom I might have gleaned, except that it’s too soon to tell if we made good choices even for us, and harder to say if they would be relevant to you.