My youngest could easily have skipped kindergarten.
For that matter, preschool and first grade probably too.
She is four and came home with a worksheet the other day on fractions – she got 100.
She can count to 100 too.
And today she came home explaining to me the difference between a noun and a verb.
I mean, my word.
Admittedly, it’s hard to keep her engaged and not bored.
She didn’t take my intense need to learn about language seriously, and I was desperate for someone who understood my hunger. My dad would have understood, but he was gone much of the time, and during his recent visits home he had become strange, dark, and intensely distracted. Although I’m not sure why, I didn’t go to kindergarten; bored senseless, I began to create imaginary friends, all of whom were adults. Much later in life, a genial psychiatrist to whom I had confided this fact pointed out how unusual it was for a child to have adult imaginary friends, but it still seems perfectly natural to me. I felt safe with them, and they taught me a great deal.