A couple shots of life

Auden is insistent about learning chess these days

A family walk

Finn and his delicious peanut butter bread

Our amazing snowman creation after church

The Auden Conundrum

Well my little 4-year-old is almost all grown up...well not really but he is approaching school age which I'm slowly realizing is a completely new world of parenting where the influence I hold over Auden suddenly shifts to his teachers and peers. What's really scary is that I have no control, or at least very little control, over who these individuals will be. The protective mother hen has suddenly emerged and I'm slightly freaking out trying to decide what to do.

The first major decision is whether Auden will enter kindergarten next year. Here are the factors we're trying to weigh:

In Favor of Kindergarten Next Year:
-Auden a smart little guy. I know I'm biased but he is. He's not brilliant or a genius (thank God), but is certainly smart enough for kindergarten. He's starting to read and is at least border-line brilliant when it comes to puzzles and spatial reasoning. He's a little sponge and loves learning.
-Auden loves school. Right now Auden attends a head start a couple blocks from his house. We wanted to find a preschool for him we thought he'd go only 2 or 3 days a week. But head start turned out to be the most convenient and certainly most affordable (i.e. free) so off our little baby went five mornings a week. We were worried it would be too much for him, but when we presented the options to him he assured us he did in fact want to go to school "everyday". He's done fine and loves his school (at least most days)
-I want him to likes school and so I don't want him to be bored if we hold him back a year. I'm starting to think that really liking school may be an unrealistic expectation but I at least want to set him up so its possible.
-What else are we going to do with him to keep him busy and growing and happy?

In Favor of Holding Back a Year:
-Auden would be one of the youngest kids in his class (July birthday) and he is by nature a little bit of a follower. He also inherited from me the desire to be friends with the "bad" kids. He's a bit impulsive and doesn't have great control over his emotions. I'm worried he won't have enough confidence with all those older kids to be "good".
-Auden also inherited from us problems with speech which is certainly not his fault seeing as both mom and dad were horrible talkers at his age. His dad was held back one year before starting kindergarten by his speech pathologist mother because he was simply incomprehensible.
-I would miss him and be a little jealous
-I don't think I've finished teaching him all the things I wanted to. Especially if he gets stuck in all day kindergarten, my time with him would be so short!
-Its super convenient. Finn is still a little guy and won't be heading off to childcare or preschool anytime soon. I am free and available to stay home with them both.

I think we're leading towards waiting a year. I feel like I'm preparing to send him out into the jungle...which might be a little crazy. Anyways, all this anxiety has led me to check a multitude of books on homeschooling out from the library which may be the route we go if only for a year. I'm also looking into the fancy Waldorf/Montessori/Environmental private elementary schools and wondering just how big of a scholarship they might shell out. I feel like this is one of the biggest decisions we've had to make so far as parents and I don't want to screw it up....