First School Trip

My five year old is out on his first school trip. He is very excited. Last week he came home with a note and specific instructions: he had to have a lunchbox with a handle and no unhealthy food in it. Since then I have been duly making preparations as directed.

They are going to a farm. I think T is more excited about the logistics – the packed lunch and going on the coach. He’s been asking me to have packed lunches for ages but I have told him no – I can’t be bothered to think what to put together every morning and think that a school lunch will be much better for him. He was unmoved by my reasoning, but did listen when I said that I never had packed lunch at school. “Never?” he asked, amazed. He was triumphant when he realised he’d need a packed lunch for the trip. “You can’t say no on that day” he pointed out with irritating logic during our most recent discussion.

When your child starts school you begin a long process of letting go. The first school trip is another milestone I’ve realised. I’ve become used to dropping him off at school and knowing where he is all day. On trip day I will have no idea where he is.

He is very excited about the coach, something I don’t share. He will be leaving the sanctuary of the school premises and going out on the roads. I remember all too well news footage of those lumbering vehicles overturned on tight country bends, their passengers broken and bent inside. I appreciate that this is obsessive maternal worrying but I can’t help it sometimes - my worst fears always surface into my relaxing mind just as I’m dozing off at night.

On a practical note, T is car sick, a trait we first discovered winding into the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. I have taken precautions; a travel sick pill, a plastic bag in his pocket, a request to his teacher that he sits at the front. But I’ll also be hoping all day that he feels well and the excitement of his first trip is not marred by the discomfort and embarrassment of throwing up in front of his class.

I was glad to see many other mothers in the playground flapping as much as me: have you got waterproof trousers? Have you done sun cream? Do they need shoes as well as wellies? It was a new experience for all of us, used to being out with our children and deciding when they should eat, wee, change shoes or put on sun cream. The trip has introduced a new level of independence for mother and child. Next time we’ll all be much more relaxed; I watched with envy as one mother with older children casually put her son’s backpack in the line then wandered off to chat while the rest of us fussed.

T walked proudly up to school with his lunchbox, showing it off to friends we met. He was much more calm than I. In the car I’d started fretting about whether he might wet himself on the coach journey. I’d mentioned spare pants and he’d thought silently then said “I’m a big boy now”. He is. And I must learn to let go.

Friends for Tea

When your first child starts school it’s as much of a change for you as it is for them. Days are dictated by a fixed schedule and you have new challenges to face. One of these is Friends for Tea.

My son has just started asking to have friends over for tea after school. I’ve discovered that there is quite a network of children going to each other’s houses, something we’ve not been part of. This has started to make me panic about my child being left out. Why has he not been asked when he seems to be popular at school? Do the parents find me too unapproachable? Do the children not really like him at all?

Fortunately, my son doesn’t have any of these anxieties, he just wants to have some friends over for tea. But for his mother this involves a whole new area of emotional turmoil. Firstly, with three young children, “after school” is a time of utter chaos. Everyone is tired and grouchy and I barely manage to prepare tea while they sit in a trance in front of the TV, fight or whine while baby cries for attention. I feel quite anxious about exposing a relative stranger to us at our weakest time of day. What will they go home and report to their parents? I will have to be organised and in good spirits, which is not usual by that time!

Secondly, there are the logistics. What will I cook? What do other children have for tea? I will have to find space in the car for a fourth child. I will have to be prepared for the three year old to be distressed the whole time the friend is here because he will be the “little brother”, unwanted in the dynamics of big boys games.

And then there’s the anxiety of being completely responsible for a stranger’s child. Until now, friends have come to play with their mums. Pre school, the reality is that your children socialise with children whose mums you want to chat to. Inviting friends to play is as much for your enjoyment as theirs. Friends for Tea means extra work without the therapy of chat. As my son makes friends I will have to leave my clique and introduce myself to their mothers, and even in my thirties that makes me feel shy and vulnerable. Relationships in the school playground are as complicated for the parents as the children.

This morning in the playground I was supposed to have made lots of enthusiastic plans with the mothers of the children my son has selected. Instead I stood alone feeling reticent to start the process which will change the relaxed sloppiness of our after school hibernation for ever. Who should I invite first? Will I be upsetting other mums or unwittingly butting in on social groups already carefully formed – I discovered that three of my son’s friends are meeting for tea tonight, happily this doesn’t faze him! There is a hidden protocol to having a school child, a lifestyle change I’m still getting used to. Having spent the journey home worrying about it my husband has told me to just listen to our son and invite people as he requests because thankfully, five year old boys don’t seem to have the social anxieties their mothers have.

Virtuous Mummy

Today I'm Virtuous Mummy. I took my children to the park while a wholesome casserole was cooking in the oven rather than dragging them across the parish on endless errands then dashing home for fish fingers and peas.

I'm not sure why I bothered. The four year old announced he didn't like cooked carrots and the two year old only ate jacket potato. But I ate it. And as I'm eighteen weeks pregnant it's important to think of Baby Three, so often nutritionally neglected in the chaos I fear.

"I only eat what Daddy cooks," the four year old declared. As Daddy is going away tomorrow for a week, he's going to be hungry.

Tomorrow I'm going shopping for fish fingers.