Welcome to mom and daughter fighting Slate's parenting podcast for Tuesday, August 4th, the Should You Redshirt, your Kindergarner edition.

I'm Elizabeth Newkamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog, Dutch Dutch goose. I'm the mom to three littles, Henry 8, Oliver 6, and Teddy 3, and I'm located in Navar, Florida.

I'm Jimmy Lillamue. I'm a writer, contributor to Slate's Karen Feeding Parenting column, and Mom to Naima, who is seven, and we reside in Los Angeles, California. Jamila and I are very excited to announce that this is the first of six special episodes. There is so much to discuss when it comes to getting ready for the new school year, this year especially. So for the next six Tuesdays, we'll be delving into everything from building relationships with your child's teacher, even when school is online, to creating studious spaces at home. On today's show, we'll be discussing starting kindergarten while everything is so non-traditional in the name of safety. Plenty of parents hold their kindergarten-age children back a year for a myriad of reasons.

Can COVID-19 be one of them?

But before we get into that, we have triumphs and fails.

Jamila?

Yes, so for triumphs and fails during our special bonus episode of Mom and Dad are fighting,

we are going to give you some vintage or classic

TNFs, if you will, from either our own lives as children or our experiences with our kids.

So this week we're talking about kindergarten and I'm going to tell a story of a fail on the part

of little Jamila or perhaps little Jamila's mom, depending on how you look at the situation.

So picture it, Chicago, 1989, or perhaps 1990.

The teenage mutant ninja turtles ruled the world, of course.

They certainly ruled my world.

And one of them in particular,

Raphael also ruled my heart, but that's a conversation for another day. So they were coming out

with a line of Ninja Turtle cookies, and there was going to be an appearance at a local grocery

store by one of the Ninja Turtles. I forget which one it was. I know it wasn't Raphael because he was my favorite. I think it was Michelangelo. Anyway, so my mom tells me, I'm going to pick you up a little bit early from school so we can go to the grocery store and see the Ninja Turtle and get some cookies, right? So I hear I'm going to pick you up a little early from school. I'm five. I do not

have any concept of time. So I'm thinking early dismissal like I'm barely going to be at school.

Like I came here to check in and then it's time to get on with this cookie and Ninja Turtle

business. And so I just remember that entire day just feeling so worried and so nervous that my mom had either changed her mind or wasn't telling the truth and that she wasn't going to come.

And I even like, because I had separation anxiety, I would spend some special time with the school counselor once a week to talk about, you know, the sads that I felt when I got dropped off at

...