Baptism by complete submersion

We have the opportunity to send PJ to a brand new Mandarin Chinese Immersion program next year for kindergarten. When Adam brought this up to me I was completely against it. You know, you are suppose to go to school with your siblings, in the same building, ride the bus together and have your parents be able to help you with your homework.

I thought I would let him follow up on this new found “opportunity” and then secretly just hoped it would die out by itself. But that’s not what happened.

What has happened is that we started asking questions, reading more about it and realizing it really is a great opportunity.

And for me, I’ve had to ask myself “why”. Why I had such an immediate negative response to the idea and what’s behind that.

I realized it’s simply fear of the unknown, fear of not being able to help because I don’t know the language, fear because she will be alone and not in the same school as her brother or riding the bus with her brother or being in class with the friends she already has, fear that she will feel different or isolated, fear because it’s such a drastic change from what my perception of what her kindergarten experience was going to be like, fear because I don’t want to make the wrong decision for her.

At the end of pulling apart my thoughts and moving through my fears, I think my friend Jen said it best, “you will be giving her an amazing gift.”

I’ll let you know later if we give her that gift or not.

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