A Pre-School Primer

By Nancy Rabinowitz

The New York City Nursery School admissions process is not unlike cleaning the floor of Grand Central Station with your tongue: disgusting, degrading, and amazingly time consuming. The essay writing alone could turn the most well-adjusted moms and dads into Parents on Prozac. So for those suffering the process, I offer some help: sample answers to actual application questions.

1. Describe your child's interactions with peers, friends and family.
Suzy is a conflict-resolver. In the playground, she will often end a dispute with a hit or kick. Through trial and error she has learned that in particularly difficult disputes, a well-placed bite can be especially effective. Johnny, on the other hand, is a world class whiner. When he doesn't get his way, his screeching has every dog on the Upper West Side running our way.

2. Relate an important discovery you have made about being a parent. How has this discovery affected the way you interact with your child?
The most important discovery I have made is that sleep is paramount. If I don't sleep, well, let's just say you don't want to know me. Since neither little Suzy nor little Johnny has ever slept through the night, this has certainly affected my interaction with them. I am short tempered, prone to angry outbursts, and often turn to the television as a source of childcare when my exhaustion is such that even a swift kick from Suzy won't keep me awake.

3. What are you hoping to find in a school for your child?
My kids are cute and all, but not 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Frankly, I have no idea what to do with them. I'm hoping to dump them on you for several hours a day (you do have an extended care option, don't you?) to see if school can do any better with them than I have. Also, I'm looking forward to saving a few bucks. Even though it'll cost me thirty grand to send two-three year olds to advanced baby-sitting, when I consider what I've been paying their Nanny under the table, I figure after the tax deduction, I'll be ahead of the game.

4. What are your moral values and how do you communicate them to your child?
We believe in grabbing what we want when we want it, throwing tantrums when we don’t get our way, and generally behaving as if the world revolves around us. Our toddlers seem to have adopted this ethos completely.

5. Your own educational experience often influences the educational choices you make for you child. Please comment and expand on the above sentence.
Wait, I’m sorry. I thought we were talking about Nursery School.

6. Is there any additional information you'd like to share with us?
Johnny and Suzie are terrific kids, really. Like all two-year-olds worth their weight in Pirate Booty, they know networking starts in Nursery. If they don't get into the right school, it's goodbye success, hello homelessness. So take them, please. If you don't, they might not get to learn social climbing along with socialization for one more year. My husband and I might even end up with a few more chances to share their wonder at everything from fireflies to fire engines. To marvel at every new word learned, every kind gesture offered.

On second thought, don't take them. I just changed my mind.

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Copyright 2004 Nancy Rabinowitz