Serenity became 4 years old a few months ago, and we are actually expecting our second child this July. Being the 1st generation Chinese immigrants in mid-west, we have some unique challenges such as being the minority in the community. This is not the case in the pre-school/toddler community we sent Serenity to (Hope Montessori at Creve Coeur). But it’s not always the case. I recall, once when Yoyo was still very little, probably one year old, we went to a mall play ground, and a Caucasian girl (about 10 years old) came over to play with Yoyo, but her dad called her back. It seems to me a race kind thing was going on (from the expression). This is fine with me, my personality is I don’t care too much about discrimination other people say/express towards me. But nonetheless, I don’t want my daughter felt that way when she grows up.
Economy condition
Beside race, another common thing is different economy conditions among families. For us personally, we really work hard to send her to the private pre-school. It’s not a small change for us. I wishes my app store or google adsense revenue could make up some of those some day 🙂
Fun aside, once I talked about private school option with a fellow parent (his daughter is my daughter’s good friend in the class). And one worry from her dad, is if we send our kids to private school, will they feel so removed to ordinary people’s lives. Note both of us have fairly humble up-brings. We don’t want our kids growing up having no empathy for people are less fortunate than us. This is a very good point I did not think much before the conversation. Interestingly enough, I heard discussions on similar topic lately with my coworker, one reason they decided moving to new school district is that new school district demographics matches their background better. Not too affluent like some other districts 🙂
I will update more as I have more thoughts on this topic.