As I write this, life just became easier for me.
We are furiously packing the kids for their first day of school. Thanks to the Wall government, it is now when it is supposed to be: after Labour Day, not three days before the end of August, when nothing is accomplished except the ruination of the last week of summer.
It's a big day in our household, because our youngest, Spencer is going to kindergarten. The next milestone of this magnitude includes a cap and gown and a bus ticket to university.
Looking at parents with infants and toddlers, I constantly wonder, "How did we survive that? How did we have the stamina? Thank God I never have to change another diaper on my kids."
With this transition means the beginning of the end of daycare. We still have him in a government-recognized daycare, but full-day kindergarten means he is at school every second day and daycare every second day. We still pay the full freight to keep the spot, but at least I'm not running across town in the middle of the day to transport him from pre-kindergarten to daycare. That was a big hassle, because it made it difficult to get much accomplished during the first half of the day.
While pre-kindergarten was a blessing, the half-day portion of it was not much fun.
Within a year, we will be able to say goodbye to daycare, period. No more babysitters. We had so many over the years, I was pulling my hair out. One who supposedly didn't smoke in the house must have been a chain smoker, because our kids came home smelling like a bar. Another lived in subsidized housing, and was told she couldn't babysit kids because that wasn't allowed. Apparently earning an income is a bad thing if you need subsidized housing.
The establishment of a new daycare in Estevan late last year, part of a swath of new spaces recently funded by the provincial government, was a big deal for me. If I couldn't have found adequate daycare, I might have had to pull out of the workforce. You don't often hear about guys doing that, but when your wife is a nurse, what choice do you have? If you can't find daycare or a sitter, both of which are in extremely short supply, someone has to look after the kids.
Soon we will see the end of our universal child care benefit as well, the $100 per month per kid social program the Harper government brought it. Our kids were the first cohort to benefit from this program. It wasn't a lot, but it sure helped. It made a difference in our household, allowing both of us to stay in the workforce.
The world Spencer is entering seems like the one I entered 32 or so years ago. A friendly teacher, a sandbox, lots of laughing kids. But I wonder how far off in the future it will be when the school supply list includes an iPad and not erasers?
When I was in primary school, kids failed. They were held back if they couldn't grasp the concepts. Today, that hardly ever happens. Then we wonder why we have illiterate kids in Grade 8.
The new form of math teaching was a total bust for our daughter, who is eight. Pulling out an abacus is what made the difference. I fear we will have to be ever vigilant of new-fangled teaching trends that fail to recognize reading, writing and arithmetic are truly paramount.
Change is constant, and hopefully most of the changes we see are for the positive. But instead of looking at today with trepidation, I am greatly relieved. We got this far, we can go the distance.
- Brian Zinchuk, Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association 2012 Columnist of the Year, is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
