A Helpful Reminder

Madeleine Thompson - 18 Oct 17

Mid-October.  Several weeks into the new school year and, for my youngest child, several weeks into his new nursery.  My son is three and he attended a private day nursery when he was smaller.  We moved him into the nursery attached to our daughter’s school so he would have the same experience that she did, and get to know his potential future school friends.   My son is a loving and gentle boy who made friends easily at his first nursery and never really displayed any tendencies that would suggest he might be like me, shy.

The age difference between my oldest and youngest isn’t big; barely two years between them, and for the most part they are experiencing a lot of the growing up together now that they can talk freely to each other, play together, and, as siblings do, fall out.   Having two children close together presented its challenges when they were both in infancy.  The obvious being it’s no easy task to negotiate the day with a carefree toddler who has little sense of danger, whilst trying to make sure the baby is ok too.  I’m sure there are many parents who have felt the same sense of apprehension at the thought of how life will be when they welcome their second child, as it is not easy looking after one child let alone two.   I recall friends of ours telling us that two children were not ‘double the work’ but actually much, much harder.  So those early days were sometimes tricky but eventually they passed and the children have come into their own now as little siblings who are carving out their mark on their world. 

One thing I’m always painfully aware of in life in general is never to become complacent.   Never to think, “I’ve got this”, because Mother Universe can always push me back over again, as if to remind me that the world is much bigger than us mere mortals.   So, things like sleep, we tried hard not to assume we’d cracked it in case the rules all changed that very night.  And when we did dare to think we had cracked it with our daughter, she changed the rules quite drastically and we ended up starting again.  Things like food; there is always the potential for their favourite food to become the most vile thing they’ve ever tasted and you find yourself explaining to complete strangers that, “I don’t understand it, she’s always loved my tuna pasta bake’”.   You get the picture; never become complacent.

But what if that complacency creeps up on you, unannounced? 

Settling my daughter at the school nursery when she was three was done very carefully, very planned, with lots of preparation, and lots of expectation that she might feel scared, sad, and unsettled.   I don’t remember much now about the mornings when I would drop her off and walk her in.  I don’t remember much about leaving her or whether she cried much in those early weeks.  I don’t think she did; I think she was just very quiet and cautious.  I do remember her lovely teacher telling my husband and I at the parents’ evening how our daughter was too shy to talk to her in the first weeks, so the teacher would sit with her a little bit every day until, eventually, she opened up and let her in.    

Preparing for my son to go to the same nursery, I’m afraid to say the complacency had arrived and I hadn’t even heard it coming in the door.   I had assumed, wrongly, that he would be more resilient because he’d come from a network of friends at the other nursery and had never really showed me any shyness.  I assumed, wrongly, that he would be happy just knowing his big sister was in the building, and he would find his feet and meet some new friends quickly.  

The early weeks have really been an eye-opener for me in terms of my own awareness and a huge reminder to me never to assume anything.  My son has cried every morning that I’ve taken him.  To the point where I will take him in, take his sister around to her gate, and then return to check he is ok.   Of course, when I return he’s always happily playing by that point, but that first ‘grabbing my leg’ and crying bit isn’t easy and I always come away feeling like a bad parent.    I know it’s best not to keep going back and he needs to build his resilience, so it’s not going to be bad in the long term, but it really struck me that, whether you’ve done it before or not, all children are completely and totally different and the rules for one are not necessarily the rules for others.   

I guess it is Mother Universe’s way of reminding me my son is an individual too, that I should never be complacent, and that we’re all human.     

Madeleine Thompson

I am mum to my little chicks, Aisha, 6 and Abel, 4. Originally from Yorkshire, UK, I now live in a little town in the North West. By day, I work for myself as a freelance PA. By night, I indulge my passion for writing.

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