Thread: Weekly Poll: What's the #1 piece of advice you wish you'd been given your first year?

So whether you have been doing this since the beginning or just pulled your kids out of the system, was is the #1 piece of advice you wish someone had told you that first year??

Mine would be more than one but I guess the one I would pick that could have saved my sanity is... not every child is a work book kinda of kid!! Months of trying to get my visual learner to "do" his homework.. results in finding about 50 pages of sheets hidden in his room!

What is your piece of advice to all the newbies out there?

I chose: DON'T buy everything at once or everything you see!

Reason is this is what we did and found out later on that all those books were never going to get used. We fell into and stayed at the smaller books, games, computer, art, science, and mostly imagination for our girls. Now I have spent the last month cleaning out the closet of books and trying to sell them back to the store that I bought them from and even though they were never used they want to give me 1/2 price for them since they are considered used because they left the store.
But oh well I am glad to just have the space back.

I went with "Other", and the piece of advice that I wished I'd received?

"Relax."

I chose "Other"

My advice: Realize that, regarding hsing, things will change day to day, year to year.

"Don't be afraid to follow your gut." "You CAN do it!!"

Fear kept me from doing what my gut told me. If I could have that first year back, I would do it totally differently now.

Other.
Don't stress about defending your decision to other people no matter what they say.
Relax and focus on the positives.

I didn't really explore that many options for kindergarten for us and now I kind of wish I had know about a few more things. But I'm not full of regrets or anything.

"Don't buy everything". I wasn't as bad as what I see some people do but I have my fair share of stuff that will never be used. I avoided boxed curriculum so that kept the costs down. Nobody was more surprised than me when my son ended up LOVING workbooks.

I chose "Other"
I wish someone would have said relax... well they might have I just tend not to listen to that advice. I'm still trying to take it.
Also I'd like to have heard, "It doesn't matter how much or how little you spend as long as you are comfortable with the amount" and "If she's behind in something it's fine because that's why you are doing this."

Other/relax for me, too. I made a point of learning DS' learning style, and that curbed my spending... and I'm anal retentive enough that planning ahead and being organized are musts anyway... but someone should have sat me down, told me to take a deep breath and LET IT GO.