A mark of confidence in your child’s school is the willingness to have his wailing self pried from your head by a man who is essentially a stranger to you while you, with goofy forced cheeriness chirp, “I love you! Have a great day,” and then go jogging across the parking lot to your car (since you had to get out of the car pool line and park when your child, instead of hopping out of the car like he does every other day, jumped in the back of the minivan and hid under empty liquor store boxes that you were going to use to pack books up that morning)–where even with the doors closed and windows up, you can still hear your kid crying for you. Until the two year old starts to cry for his brother, and then wakes up the 2 month old, who realizes that he has not nursed at all in ten minutes and screams at you.
A mark of confidence in the parents and teachers at your child’s school is a singular lack of self-consciousness when you make an unflattering surprise appearance at the morning car pool line. Instead of staying safely in your car (no one was supposed to see you, damn it!) while wearing the most hideous items from your closet (a maternity top–and you’re not goddamned pregnant anymore!), if you can skip across the parking lot, in full view of every single person in line, oily hair flapping in the wind, shoeless feet padding on the concrete…the bra-less wonder holding the inexplicably sobbing four-year-old wrapped around your neck…with no fear of judgement from the other adults, then you, my friend, have picked the right school.