Playgroup

BEFORE we made the decision, I googled, “What is the right age for a child to start school?” Google replied, “What kind of parent are you? You should be responsible enough to know!”

At least that was what all those conflicting opinions were telling me. Some experts said five, others three, while others said that two hours after birth a baby must be enrolled in karate right away.

Our boy just turned two, a couple of years late for martial arts. So I told the wife it was our discretion as parents whether to enroll the kid in a skydiving class or in a playgroup where he learns things more important than extreme sports, like how to dribble a ball and hit a playmate with it at the slightest provocation. A playgroup it is.

I don’t know what a playgroup is other than its obvious reference to children grouping themselves to play. It’s an image of happy kids locked away in a playroom so their yayas can be freed of their responsibility for at least two hours and exchange the latest chika at the waiting area outside.

Kids these days are different. I didn’t have this kind of playgroup as a child because there was none in the town where I grew up. If there was one, it would have been too expensive for the family. Besides, ours was a neighborhood of babies growing up all over the place like mushrooms, so it was the parents who needed to group themselves and play cards to de-stress.

In our place, you start preschool at six. Earlier than that, you limit your environment to the neighborhood and do nothing but refuse sleep, refuse food, refuse bath, break things, cry, soil your lampin and repeat this cycle of making other people’s lives miserable all over again.

Back to institutionalized playgroup, yesterday was my boy’s first day in school. As if he knew the significance of the day to his life, he was up earlier and more hyperactive than usual. We arrived in school ahead of schedule. He spent the free time running around, like an athlete warming up.

Then it was time. The playgroup facilitators gathered all the kids and led them inside while we parents milled outside the door looking more scared than our children. We were not allowed in. Playgroup time is time for parents to turn over the role of parenthood to the school. If those little kids were there to plan a nuclear war, we would be the last to know.

What happened next was more than a nuclear war. In a matter of seconds, the room exploded with screams of two-year-olds terrified at each other and confused at their new environment. Outside, we parents fought and elbowed each other for the little peephole on the door praying it wasn’t our kid waving a soiled diaper around to scare everyone.

We would have forced our way in and pulled our kids out had the facilitators not appealed to the parents to please calm down and leave the building now because our presence as parents was only making things worse.

That hurt a bit. But we obliged and took our place at the waiting area. We didn’t talk to each other. It was still two hours before we could see our children again.

Consoled by the thought that our kids were there to learn their first lesson on socialization, we relaxed, checked our phones and updated our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, like real adults.