View as: GRID LIST
9 things I have learned in my first school term
The book bag is an official channel of official communication
I mean, who knew?? It comes somewhere on the Official List of Communications between Letters, Email, and Carrier Pigeon. No b*****d has ever shared this
The book bag must be checked everyday for important paper messages hidden amongst the other random crap your child decides to bring home (see no 6). It is never, ever used for books. Fool. Apparently this is something other people just know ‘naturally’, but it took me a good month to catch on because I am completely clueless.
It’s more expensive than it looks
Were you looking forward to a financial break when your first born hit full time mainstream education? LOL! Sweet. Now not only do you have to figure out
And you will also spend a small fortune in loose change for non-uniform days, bake sales, harvest festival donations, school trips, and other random bobbins. All of which must be supplied direct to the office in envelopes you don’t own and can never remember to purchase. No, you cannot just write an upfront cheque at the beginning of term. Nor is there a Direct Debit option. I
If you are the owner of a baby, take my advice – stock up on your stationary, and start saving your small change now.
You won’t have a scooby do what they do all day
Yep, this old chestnut. But it really is a violent contrast after nursery, where you get to shoot the breeze with the staff about your darling little one at some length – and even get a written daily report of their consumption, bowel movements, play pals and activities.
At school you get 15 mins facetime with the teacher each term. It’s weird.
You
I’ve even tried all the inventive questions you’re supposed to ask, about what their teacher said to them today, what made them laugh, what was so-and-so doing at lunchtime etc etc.
Nada.
Occasionally bits will slip out accidentally as they are trying to keep you talking at bedtime, or when playing
This is a well documented phenomenon, but suddenly being completely blind to 35+ hours of your kid’s life is pretty damn discomforting. The only thing more discomforting is actually getting more face-time with the teacher, because it means your kid has been a little turd. The long journey from the collection point into the classroom when you are called in after school is your new Walk of Shame. The old one was waaaaay more fun.
The school gate is a whole nother level of social
Dadonthenetheredge, my greatest supporter/detractor, has a word to describe my behaviour in social situations, especially new ones. That word is ‘intense’.
The school gate is not a good place for ‘intense’.
Having run the gauntlet of Mummyland groups, and nursery, (plus, you know, school, university and work) you might think I would have developed intensity-dampening strategies, or at least the ability not to care. Neither of these have yet occurred. Instead I simply continue to be just slightly inappropriate,
But this isn’t your own, personal, run-of-the-mill social anxiety. Oh no no. Because this is school. This is the beginning of your child’s real social life. The impressions and connections they make here will colour and shape their lives as they move with their peers through the education system over the next 14 years. So now you get to have social anxiety on behalf of your CHILD, which is a billion times worse. Why weren’t they invited back for a
You obviously want your child to make friends at school, and that means EXTRA pressure to ingratiate yourself with parents – or at least make the effort to appear normal – lest your own personality foibles impair your child’s social success.
My intensity does NOT do well under pressure.
To counteract this, I have taken to putting on real clothes (as opposed to maternity yoga pants) and actual make-up
I’m pretty sure it’s working a treat.
The administration is EPIC
Oh God. The admin.
It started with a school letter before school even started, littered with so many dates, rules, meetings and events I literally couldn’t make head, tail or any other random anatomical sense of what was
This is why I know F-all about PTA activities or phonics. Probably.
This initial and epic four A4 sides of dense communications was followed by an actual list of dates, not, it turns out, exhaustive. (I missed Children In Need non-uniform day for instance – exactly the kind of shite which tortured and haunted my own childhood. Insert flashback).
Let me make it clear that I am a grown woman literally afraid of her own post, and who considers his willingness to act as my personal secretary
So having to deal with the sheer breadth and girth of correspondence on behalf of the Big Small Person has been… somewhat challenging. I mean I’m barely keeping my own sh*t together, here.
You are not, by the way, allowed to SHARE the administrative burden. Schools will accept only one contact per child. This has annoyed and alarmed
And it is not just the paperwork via book bag, for schools have now gone 21st century on us, and have a dastardly system of texts, websites and apps they can also bombard you with. I once received 6 text messages in one day. And there are 3 billion websites to sign up for and remember passwords for. The general school website. The payment app. The event
I was going to expand on this list for comedic effect but I’m too busy hyperventilating having typed it out.
Only today, on visit to the school office with various tardy permission slips and envelopes of money, the nice Office Lady tapped me consolingly on the shoulder, reminded me of another form I had forgotten, and told me she’d put an extra
We’re not even at the end of the first term in a pretty big school and this woman knows me by name, knows my child by name, and knows about my post allergy and gaping administrative blind spot. I spend considerably more time with her than with my child’s actual teacher.
Far from being embarrassed, I’m actually hoping that by Year 1 I can take her in correspondence from home about banking, insurance, mortgages and all the other crap that melts my tiny brain, and she might help me
Your child was NOT a prolific artist at nursery.
Although I have seen some evidence of actual learning, as far as I can make out, (which isn’t far, see no 3) the Big Small Person spends most of her time at school scribbling on, cutting out, then sticking, stapling or paper-fastening bits of paper together (I had no idea paper-fasteners were still a thing), and finally bringing them home and insisting they be preserved for posterity.
There is no way posterity can cope with this volume of
The Big Small person hadn’t reached 2 before I had learned to coo adoringly over every pointy splodge that came home from nursery and then surreptitiously discard them in the recycling (well buried – to do otherwise is a rookie mistake new parents only ever make once).
I’m not a monster – I keep seminal pieces in a memory box under the spare bed, but if I did not cull we would literally be living around stacks of child-art like those people you see in Channel 5 hoarding documentaries.
I actually think
There is nothing that expresses rejection quite as eloquently as giving back painstakingly crafted, personalised gifts you no longer have any use for. THIS IS NOT OKAY PARENTS. I actually think they may be trying to break up with me.
Either that or they’re getting old and don’t
I am a rubbish, rubbish, teacher
Speaking of my parents, I remember the horror of being taught to drive by my Dad, who would insist that my inability to consistently reverse around a corner was wilful incompetence, rather than chronic special unawareness and general ineptitude. I swore then I would be a model of patience and tranquility when guiding my own children.
Turns out, not entirely unexpectedly, I was a) wrong, and b) a bit
Perhaps it’s the sleep deprivation, possibly it’s genetics, conceivably it may be the Big Small Person’s natural instincts to press each and every one of my freaking, c*ck-wombling buttons.
Whatever it is, I find I simply cannot keep my temper when the little sh*t claims it can’t read the word ’cat’ by the end of a book about cats, heavily illustrated with cats, where we have painfully sounded out
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhh!
If you are reading this and you are a teacher, I take my hat off to you. It is not my forte, and I am far more like my Father than I had realised.
Could be the beard.
It’s quiet
I sort of knew this one was coming, which is why I overfilled my first few weeks with activities to stave off my new reality.
And then one day it was just me and the Small Small Person, and I didn’t know what to say to her.
Because for so
In many ways I’ve enjoyed the one-on-one time with the Small2, who has been basically dragged round after her sister for her entire life, but she’s still not much of a conversationalist. I’ve had to relearn the art of the parental monologue, which never came particularly easily to me in the
Since the Big Small learned to talk I had clearly forgotten this horror, and have often wished for blessed silence, and even for the opportunity to actually monologue again (or frankly to say anything that might be heard and heeded). Be careful what you wish for. Because now I realise I
The days are short
Luckily it turns out that 9am to 3.30pm isn’t actually very long. Certainly I can’t seem to achieve anything terribly worthwhile once I’ve fitted in Small Person meals, snacks and naps. If we’re lucky we’ll get to the shops, park or a playgroup, but that’s about it. I’m still getting used to having my days curtailed and restricted in this way, but I’ve not yet forgotten to pick the Big Small up – I’m told this will happen eventually.
Fortunately the nice Office Lady
Mumonthenetheredge
Read more from mumonthenetheredge at www.mumonthenetheredge.wordpress.com, or at www.facebook.com/mumonthenetheredge.