Is Thriving a Reasonable Aim for Kindergarten?

What is thriving?  How can I as a parent work to engender conditions for my daughters' thriving?  How do I know when they are thriving?  And how do I recognize when the hurdles they face are a necessary part of growing up versus an obstacle to their thriving?

In Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest, Ramona enters kindergarten and meets "the nicest teacher in the world." Through her interactions with Miss Binney and her classmates, this young protagonist learns about the world of playground games, seat work, getting along with others, and the anguish of being too big to get away with babyish behavior, like tantrums or too much play, and yet still too young to fully discipline herself all day, every day.  What makes Cleary's Ramona series so compelling to me as I read it again as a mom and an educator (having also read the Ramona books when I was a young girl), is that the author captures so poignantly the travails an imaginative young girl might face in her journey to grow up and become a responsible being.

My older daughter has had a hard week as a kindergartner.  Her teacher was absent from school on Monday, and my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1) reported that not much happened in class while they were being overseen by the substitute.  I learned last night over dinner that my DD1 did not eat the lunch on Tuesday or Wednesday because she did not like what was served.  In addition, she misses the fact that one of her two new best friends in kindergarten is away on vacation this week.  And to top it off, she woke up yesterday morning with a swollen knee and we are now investigating whether or not she may have Lyme Disease.  It does not appear that this is a week in which my daughter is exactly thriving.

One line of on-going inquiry that I intend to explore in this blog is to examine my own assumptions as a parent and as an educator about my desire for my daughters' thriving, and to differentiate between what may be my hopes for my daughters and my expectations.  Is it reasonable on my part to want my daughters to thrive through each developmental stage?  How do you keep yourself in check from expecting too much for your children or from the public schools?