As I leisurely walk from home, towards one of the few schools I’ll be visiting before sending my daughter to middle school, I remember my insane K school research. I remember the stress that I and my friends experienced while selecting a K school in San Francisco, including:

• Visiting dozens of schools, both private and public.
• Thinking that we had to do private school, because we all loved those beautiful schools we visited and wanted to do “the best” for our kids.
• Thinking whether to do single language, immersion, or bilingual.
• Thinking that we wouldn’t have any luck in the public school lottery in San Francisco. A lottery that people deem impossible to get through (before really trying).
•  Researching like crazies in blogs and web sites like Greatschools.org
•  Getting books from the library about schools.
• Endless discussions with “battle-hardened” parents with older children who had gone through the process.

Six years ago, when my daughter Isa was about to get into Kinder, my husband and I were some of those stressed people.  We applied to 6 of the 20 private schools and got into one. We also applied to public schools and after visiting about 20 as well selected the seven to be put in our list and got none of our public choice schools.

I’m from Ecuador and speak only in Spanish to the kids since they were babies. I also do trips to Ecuador twice a year to maintain the Spanish Immersion. See some of my Ecuador stories in my blog at IncultureParent.com magazine. My husband is American and  studied history of Asia in college and was interested in exposing the kids to an Asian language. So, most of our school public school applications were for immersion schools with our top choices in the Asian languages.

Since we did not get any of the public schools of our choice in the first round of application, we resubmitted our public application, and got ready to start our daughter in the private bilingual school to which we were accepted. After a couple of days of private school, we got a notice from the SFUSD that we were accepted into a mandarin immersion program. We had the difficult choice of deciding between leaving our daughter in the school we had already payed for (and got a partial scholarship for), or move her to public. I had a hard time with the decision, but thanks to my more practical husband we decided for the latter.

After 6 years with my daughter, and later on my son, in a public school, I have nothing but good things to say about our choice. Thanks to that decision and to the fact that I didn’t have to go back to work full time:

• We didn’t become stressed parents who had overextended beyond our means to be able to afford private school.
• Our kids learned a third anguage for free. See our Una familia treslingüe: Español, Engles y 中文 article at the Miparentscounsil web site.
• We have been able to, with the money we saved from private schooling,  go back to Ecuador every year for two months. We have been able to expose the kids to Spanish immersion and visit that culture and live with their Ecuadorian family.
• We have been able to take time off to go camping for weeks, or go to other places within the US ( like our road trips from San Francisco to Phoenix, or Williamsburg to Miami, or DC to NH among others) or internationally (aside from Ecuador, El Salvador, Dominican Republic and hopefully soon Costa Rica).
• We have provided our kids with a down-to-earth experience about life, thanks to the exposure to more cocioeconomic and racial diversity.

As my kids get older, I don’t rule out the possibility of doing private school in the future.  I feel though that aside from whatever school you choose, it is highly important for parents to be present in their kid’s lives.

Halloween has become the time of the year when the witches remind me to listen to my kids and try to understand who they are. 

I was raised in Ecuador by a lovely mom whose personality is always positively changing with the times. But when I was a child, parenting was more about following the rules, than listening to the individual needs of the children.

I have made it a point to try to see my kids for who they are and listen to their needs, but I guess sometimes I’ve forgotten to do so.

A couple of weeks before Halloween, my 10-year-old daughter, declared that she wanted to dress up as a pirate for Halloween. I like to help her fabricate her own costumes, sometimes very successfully(like when she was Pippi Longstockings) and sometimes not so much….

A week before Halloween, at my neighbor’s garage sale, my daughter found a blonde wig, a little long performer dress and a white fake boa scarf. She loves to dress up, so she put it all on immediately and made several poses for the camera. I told her she looked fabulous and that maybe she could use it for Halloween. She agreed and we bought the costume.

During Halloween morning at the school parade, after wearing the attire for a bit it, she said it itched and took it off.  She told me then that she really wanted to be a pirate that eve. She said that since I loved so much how she looked with the wig costume,  she had wanted to please me by wearing it. I was about to get annoyed about having to fabricate a new costume that afternoon, when I remembered a Halloween parade years before when I failed at my goal of listening to my kids. So,  I told her I would help her make a good pirate custom for that afternoon and we came up with something.

Years before, at a Halloween parade at her preschool, my then 4-year-old daughter, dressed up as Dorothy. Parents were asked to dress up, so I thought I could dress up as a scare crow. When I told her about my intention to dress up as a scarecrow to her, first she it would be great and then said it may be scary. I later on wore the costume anyways (bad mama) thinking she would not be scared if she knew before hand it was me. When I went to the school (I had dropped Dorothy off earlier), I first went to say hi without my face scare crow make up. She seemed to be fine with the costume. But, when she saw me fully dressed she had a fit. I had to go to the bathroom and get changed before she would go in the parade.

That incident told me a lesson, to listen to her when she says no and to hear my kid’s needs   and understand where they are coming from.  It doesn’t mean they don’t have to obey to the many rules I do set for them.  But it means that when it comes to their personal life, like their Halloween or their passions, careers, loves, I have to listen to what they choose.