Mum Diary: Losing my son to school

Felicity Hannah

Our Mum blogger reflects on the day her son finally started school…

In September it finally happened and my eldest son Harry started school. It didn’t seem possible; seeing him dressed in his formal school uniform felt as unreal as watching him dress in his pirate costume or letting him wear his Daddy’s tie.

He was excited to be going, he’s been ready for the challenge for a while. At the school gates he was all smiles as he lined up to go in. When I picked him up he jabbered away about the reading corner, the sand pit, the construction toys and what his teacher had said. He’s fine; I’m the wreck. That ‘Dear Teacher’ poem set me off.

(you know the one:
“I’m sure you have things covered
And have done this lots before
But my boy is very little
He hasn’t long turned four)

Last year it made me feel nauseous, this year it has made me weep so much over my computer I worried for my keyboard.

I managed not to disgrace myself that first morning. I resisted the urge to tell the teacher that Harry is a ‘special little snowflake’ who needs nurturing. I didn’t press my face against the window to watch him trundle in with the other tiny children. I didn’t weep all over the playground – I made it home before I had a quiet sob.

But even though Harry is delighted to be a school boy, I do have some regrets.

Regrets, I have a few

I don’t regret my little boy is at school and I am so very glad he was pleased to run through the gates for the first time. But I do have regrets. Now that they are over, I realise how incredibly precious these few years have been – and how short.

When he was a tiny baby, there was a full year where it was just us during the day: Team Baby and Me. We’d spend hours sitting on the sofa singing songs, we’d attend baby classes, we’d swim, we’d sleep cuddled up together in the bed, my body forming a protective comma around his. Then when he turned one I started to work for myself, then his brother came along, and then inevitably things got busier.

Yes, since then we have had wonderful days; last-minute trips to the zoo, picnics in the conservatory while the rain hammered down on the roof, giggling games of ‘hunt the Gruffalo’ in the woods – I am very lucky to work part time and for myself, it means I have had so many more days with my boys than many working parents get.

But there have also been days when vast piles of work landed on my desk and I have had to beg my children to play quietly in the garden while I write. There have been days when we had agreed to go walking with friends and their children, but I have cancelled because there have been housekeeping jobs to do, shopping to fetch, meals to plan. There have been times when I’ve felt so tired that when Harry and Olly asked me to play diggers I have made a cup of tea and hidden in the kitchen instead. And now I regret those missed opportunities.

Because…

Now Harry is at school I can’t just drop everything and spend the day baking or picking blackberries or going on chaotic hikes with other families. Except for weekends and school holidays, that’s lost to me – and now I regret all the times I didn’t make the most of it.

So here’s my promise to my children. When they leave school, when they start on the next stage of their lives, I will not have these regrets. I will make sure they have had a childhood rammed with adventures and laughter and silly games on rainy days. Of course I will still sometimes need to work on my days off, still need to stop playing occasionally so I can tidy the house or sort out meals. I’ll almost certainly have days where I am too tired or distracted to spend three hours building with Lego, probably quite often.

But I will make time to throw myself into having fun with my family. The next time I watch one of my children proudly stepping towards the next stage of their lives I want to know that I did my best to savour the last one.

How did you feel when your child started school?