Field Trip

My wife and I still struggle with the perfectly normal and healthy fact that M. Edium has a whole separate life from us during the hours when he's away from us at school. Between the time he's dropped off and the time he's picked up, it's his world, not ours. Of course he can tell us about stuff, but since he's four, any picture he paints us will be incomplete and colored by his perspective. As he gets older, and learns more about telling stories and keeping his parents in the loop and making himself understood, it will only get worse.

He's always happy to tell us about one or two specific brief moments of his day, but it's impossible to get the overall arc. Even some of the facts are in question. A few weeks ago he mentioned a new boy in his class named Rockshift. Somehow we failed to ever meet Rockshift, and we didn't feel comfortable asking the teachers about Rockshift, but it was driving me so crazy that eventually I paged through the sign-up sheet until I found an Indian name that M. Edium might have mistaken for Rockshift. That was a load off my mind.

Earlier this week I joined the class on a field trip to the Children's Museum in St. Paul as one of several parent chaperones. I was responsible for M. Edium and one other boy. Now I've seen what goes on in the part of the day when he's not home. Not the details, of course, since they don't visit the museum every day, but the overall arc. The vibe, if you will. By the time I got home in the early afternoon, I needed a nap.

My wife has been on more of these field trips with the class than I have, but she still feels kind of left out of his life at school. Her next chaperoning trip should fix that. For a day or so.

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Field Trip

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