The 13-Page Preschool Application

Judy Batalion - The New York Times
February 11, 2014

The first of a 12-part series on parenting.

Credit: Photo illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Holding a 13-page form from the pile on our dining room table, I called out across our apartment, trying to get my husband’s attention. This preschool application asked for not only an essay about my 23-month-old daughter, but also a reference letter, both mine and my husband’s credentials, and whether we were trustees at any major institutions. But it was the line where I was supposed to write my email address that really made me palpitate.

“Jon?” He was playing with Zee while I filled out 10 applications that required more writing than had my own applications to graduate school – to study writing. “Should I give my Ivy League email address? Should I write Ph. D. after my name?”

As the words came out, I was embarrassed. I could hear his eyes roll in the next room. “Calm down,” came his answer. “It doesn’t matter.”

It doesn’t matter, I repeated to myself. It shouldn’t matter.

It certainly shouldn’t matter to me. I was an artsy, down-to-earth Canadian who grew up in a working-class family of Holocaust survivors. At least, I used to be. Now as a Manhattan mother married to a British business consultant, I wanted to provide my daughter with the best education – and life – possible, with the childhood opportunities I didn’t have. But I also didn’t want to get caught up in the uber-competitive, status-obsessed world of New York private school.

And yet.

The seeds of panic had been planted when Zee was 6 months old. A friend was genuinely concerned: “You haven’t signed her up for preschool prep at Gymboree?” Another friend warned: “If you do, hire a consultant who can help your daughter act as if she didn’t take the class to hide it from the admissions officers.” (What?!) And another: “You need to start giving these schools charity. That’s how you get in, if you’re not racially interesting.” (White Jews – like us – being the definition of uninteresting.) In our neighborhood, kids who went to both public and private elementary schools first attended private preschools. Skipping preschool would mean limiting kindergarten options.

As soon as Zee turned a year old, I went to panels to meet admissions staff. I sat in on open houses and watched Power Point presentations on pedagogical philosophy for nursery. I attended tours to see rooftop sustainable gardens and toddler pottery studios. I smirked when a neighbor mentioned a baby résumé, but wondered if I’d prepared Zee with enough classes? (Her schedule of story-times seemed fuller than mine my freshman year at college …) I was extra-friendly at baby yoga, trying to make personal contacts. As we danced around the parachute, a mom offered to give me her name for an assured “in” at one local school. Delighted, I casually lingered after class while Zee shrieked, “Bye bye.” Shh, I whispered to my 15-month-old, I’m shmoozing for you! I soon saw: preschool was a full-time job. (Even though the school week is only six hours.)

I looked at the teetering application stack, thinking of my own parents. My mother, who suffered from depression and anxiety, had to be forced to sign a report card or school letter, which she always lost in her hoarded mess. She certainly never wrote essays about my precociousness in turning books the right way up, and how I aced the APGARs. I was no legacy, to say the least, and yet, I’d done well at school, getting myself into an Ivy League college and then graduate program.

Jon, on the other hand, was posh. He did go to fancy preschool. Then he got kicked out of university. Now he made more money than my four degrees ever would. Perhaps because of his upbringing, he wasn’t insecure. He didn’t have to prove himself as I had.

Zee’s social reality was more like his than mine. How could I educate her so she felt confident in ambitious environments, but also, grateful and level-headed, with a sense of the Canadian underdog, which I believed would let her think creatively, see things from a slant? I stared at the pages wondering how to raise a child who is from a different class than I am.

I took a deep breath. These were good schools, staffed with smart people. As I started filling-in the ridiculously detailed queries (“she sings the full ABCs, including the final verse of rhyming prose”) I had more questions than answers. I didn’t know how the next few months would play out, or how I would stop being driven by my own insecurities and focus on what my daughter needed. I couldn’t predict how Jon and I would handle our differences, which were coming to the forefront now that educating our child was at stake. I did not know what I really wanted for my little girl, nor how I would ever learn the insider etiquette, and get her into preschool.

And I certainly didn’t know what email address to put in.

“I’ll just use your email,” I called to Jon. But he didn’t hear me over the sound of Zee’s giggles.