Member-only story
YOU’RE ONLY A CHILD ONCE
My Social Networks As A Small Child in Late 1960s Toronto
Chapter 4: A four-year-old girl meets kindergarten and Jesus
Every kid raised in a developed country faces the inevitability that the law — and their parents’ sanity — will at some point make them go to school. No matter when, where, or to whom they were born. So in the summer of 1966, my parents enrolled me in the local public school. It made no difference to Dad, who was gone 12 hours a day, but I know my mother was tickled to have a few hours of peace every day.
I started kindergarten at four because of my late November birthday. It was either that or be redshirted into kindergarten at age five-going-on-six the next year, which would have been worse for everybody. Preschools were not really a thing in the sixties as most moms stayed home with their children, so kindergarten was the first formal socialization we had.
That I started early was both good and bad. At first, I barely spoke English, but it didn’t take me long to grasp the language at school and from TV. The bigger issue was I barely spoke at all. Even as my language barrier melted, I stayed an outsider, being younger, smaller and shyer than my peers. I would be a shivering mouse throughout my school years. More on that later.
