The other day at camp,\u00c2\u00a0another mom saw\u00c2\u00a0Zoe and said to me, “Your older daughter looks so grown-up!” Zoe was standing in line with her campmates; indeed she towered over most of them.<\/p>\n
The truth is that Zoe looks (and acts!)\u00c2\u00a0really big to me, too, and there have been times I’ve felt guilty about keeping her at the preschool for camp this summer. Most of the kids there are three or four; only a handful are kindergarteners-to-be like Zoe. And despite her special designation of junior camp counselor, I wondered if perhaps she would be happier at a camp with older children.<\/p>\n
Q thinks I’m silly for thinking this, and as the end of camp rapidly approaches, I’ve concluded that he’s right. Aside from the convenience factor, there\u00c2\u00a0are some real benefits of Zoe being there: She has gotten to spend\u00c2\u00a0all summer with her sister (though in separate groups in the morning, they play together in the afternoon), and\u00c2\u00a0helping out the younger kids in her counselor role<\/a> has\u00c2\u00a0to be good for\u00c2\u00a0her confidence and independence. (The teachers report that she loves being their helper.)\u00c2\u00a0Plus I know she’s having fun: Whenever I pick her up lately, she runs up to me and says, “Fifteen more minutes, Mommy! I need 15 more minutes to play.”<\/p>\n Perhaps most importantly though, Zoe will soon be a very small fish in a large pond. Why not keep her in the safe warm cocooon of preschool – where she has (literally) been the big girl on campus – for as long as we can?<\/p>\n -M<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day at camp,\u00c2\u00a0another mom saw\u00c2\u00a0Zoe and said to me, “Your older daughter looks so grown-up!” Zoe was standing in line with her campmates; indeed she towered over most of them. The truth is that Zoe looks (and acts!)\u00c2\u00a0really big to me, too, and there have been times I’ve felt guilty about keeping her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-74-two-kids-august-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13704"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13785,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13704\/revisions\/13785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}