Friday, May 06, 2011

Moseying Along To School

I drove Tucker to school this morning since Spencer went early. On the way home, I stopped to get a gallon of milk, which put me driving through the neighborhoods smack dab in the middle of elementary school time.
Our high school and middle school start at 8 a.m. while the elementary kids begin at 8:10 a.m. That gives parents time to get kids to both schools if they need to.
In our little burg, we don't have any school buses. Everyone can walk or bike to school. For the high school age kids, of course, most of them drive so they can be cool, and sleep in later.
It struck me as I saw all the parents walking to school with their elementary-aged children: Walking to school with little kids takes a long time.

My kids didn't go to school when they were that age, and I always said the best thing about homeschooling was not having to get out of the door in the morning to get somewhere.
I don't think I saw one parent and child combo actually making progress. They were stopped waiting for the dog. Or the kid was in a yard looking at flowers. Another kid knelt down on the sidewalk tying his shoe. Another kid was pointing up in a tree.
The parents stood on the sidewalk, their shoulders slumped in defeat, realizing that a beautiful spring day was no time to hurry along curious children.
The shortest distance between two points (home and school) is not a straight line for most little kids.
I guess the parents know that the walk to school will be more like a mosey, or a treasure hunt.
That's a hard lesson, but a good one, for those of us who are always in a hurry. We need to stop and smell the daffodils before they're gone.

2 comments:

coco said...

he is really enjoying laying down next to tiny flower isn' it. nice.

Linda said...

I had car pools from hell most of my kids school years which I grew to hate but we wanted them in private schools so there was no choice. In retrospect I don't know if it mattered that much.

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