Personally, I can't get through a day without a little hairy eyeball.

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Thanks, y'all, for your comments.

It's so hard to walk the line of advocacy vs. ... ... over protectiveness? over sensitivity? (over identification?) over reaction?

I don't want Bean to think that every time she encounters adversity or has a hard time with authority that it's okay to do her own thing without regard for others or that mommy (or daddy) will intervene on her behalf at the slightest sign of discord. But I also want her to know that I'm her advocate; that I think she's (to borrow a phrase of Kelly's that I love) pure magic; that I don't expect her to surrender who she is and what she wants to do simply because it's easier for her teachers (now or in the future) to try to force her to be like everyone else.

(Can you tell I was - probably still am - a bit of a rebel myself?)

I talked with the school Director a little yesterday a.m., mostly to get her input on brainstorming a solution. I dropped Bean off before, and she was resistant to going into her room, bypassing it entirely for the fab Miss Kate's room. Miss Kate was delighted to see her, and raved about how much she had enjoyed Bean's marching to her own drummer and that she missed her and wished she could have her in the class she teaches. If only. Miss Kate teaches their half-day program, and any hope I had of maybe sneaking Bean in there for the first half of the day faded when Kate said her M/W/F class is full.

She volunteered to let Bean stay with her so I could go talk to the Director, and Bean was thrilled.

My talk went well, but didn't really give me much more to go on/work with than what Bean and I had already discussed.

I talked with her teacher at the end of the day, and just got the same kind of "she needs to conform to our expectations" vibe. They insist that Bean has to lay quiet and still for an hour *without* reading or doing anything. If she can do that, then she can read. I still think that's unreasonable. For whatever reason, she won't nap in there unless she's exhausted (she napped yesterday after the 5:30 wake up) and asking her to just lay there, doing nothing, for an hour seems like a recipe for disaster.

Her teachers and I aren't going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think. To me it just feels like they're doing this "because I said so" approach. But I'm reading one of my "your kid isn't just a pain in the rear for funsies, she might be gifted" books and it's telling me that I should be deferring to authority as an example ... I wasn't having as hard a time with it in her last class, because their approach was more "how can we adapt to her?" not this "she must adapt to us" mentality.

The teacher keeps throwing "well, when she's in kindy" out; the Director, however, told me flat-out that's not cool - Bean's 4 and it's September - if it was April or May, she'd be more accepting of the "getting them ready for kindy" mindset. So my internal resistance to that at least sees validation there ...

And her teacher told me she said to Bean "well, if you do that you won't be allowed to go to kindy" because Bean's always talking about how she wants to go to kindy, and how she needs to concentrate and learn so she's ready. It's not horrible, I know, but it still rubs me wrong that she says that to Bean.

The teacher also said "she's kicking us when we lay across her to hold her down" ... wha, wha, what?? Like I said, I get that Bean running around is bad, but this ain't the solution ...

Man, this is so hard. I'm fighting my own innate "f*ck authority" streak (I'm the girl who brings home a hand towel from every hotel just because I can and because I'm not supposed to), my defensiveness of my kiddo, my hatred for the whole "system" that by virtue of necessity, I guess, disadvantages kids that are outside the Bell curve. And with all of that the knowledge that I've got to somehow *not* teach her to resist authority any more than she already does or to reel just for rebellion's sake. You're right, Vivian and Julia, that there will always be a system. either she nor I have to like it, but we both need to operate within it.

Even if I happen think a world run by Bean would be way better than the world she's got to fit herself into.
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