Morning is
entirely too early to deal with dropping M off at school.
Admittedly, my
wife and I are novices at managing the carpool lane, but we’re also working
with a kindergartner that just turned 5. Some of these other parents have
been doing this for going on six years — or longer if they’ve got older kids — and
have their drop-off maneuvers down to a science.
Unlock car
door. Kiss-like motion. And boom — they’re gone. They’re minivan ninjas.
Meanwhile, we’re
slooooow.
We’ve got to
stop the car. Walk around to M’s side. Open door. Undo car seat buckle. Get
backpack on her. Hug. Kiss. Tell her to go inside. Get back in the car. Roll
down the window and tell her to go inside again when she inevitably (albeit
awesomely) stops to turn around and wave and yell, “I love you! I hope you have
the best day ever!,” at whichever one of us is dropping her off. M has done
that every day, so I’d feel kind of bad if I just ditched her at the curb and
sped off.
Plus, as
previously mentioned, the door to my daughter’s school is too heavy for her to
open, so we’ve got to wait and watch to make sure she gets inside.
What if we
didn’t wait and she somehow got trapped outdoors and went feral? That could
totally happen. I do not want to be the parent of the deadliest kindergartner.
Slowly but
surely, however, we’re getting the hang of drop-off. Strategies employed thus
far include: 1. Arriving right when the doors to the school are unlocked so
there’s not as much traffic behind us, and 2. Waiting in line until we can pull
up as far as possible in front of the school so we don’t cause a major backup
when we get M out.
Most of the
other parents seem to understand what we’re going through, giving us knowing
nods. Tiny kid, second week — we’ll be pros at this soon enough.
But I did
get an eye roll from an SUV mom the other day.
Jaded sixth-grade
parents. They’ve seen it all, man.
Anybody have
any tips for efficient carpool lane drop-off techniques? Bonus points if they still
incorporate hugs into the procedure.
Wish I had some sage advice, but no drop-offs at our house. Cooper gets to go to school with Jill every morning. Parent as teacher is pretty awesome; free child care before and after school. Anyway, keep living the dad life.
ReplyDeleteWe inevitably have soccer balls in the car that get kicked out when my kids exit the car. We seemed to be quite the sight every morning. I am on my third year and it still doesn't go smoothly for us.
ReplyDeleteWow! I say count your blessings - at the school were I teach, we have a "no parent out of the car" rule, so you gotta figure it out or go to school somewhere else! Of course, we do have parent volunteers who open the car doors (it is California, after all...we have to have some semblance of valet or our clientele, er, parents, would, in fact, go somewhere else...) So I say, hug and kiss proudly, hold up the line as long as you can cause the day will come all too soon when little miss M will bolt out the door with a half-hearted "Bye" if you're lucky. For now, revel in the chance to spend those few seconds fumbling with her in the carpool line!
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