School, Spellings and Me!

There are a lot of situations you find yourself in, as a mother, that you never really thought about when you decided to have a baby.

Like the 4am wake ups to find missing bogeys, or letting them eat floor food just to avoid a tantrum.

That kind of thing.

But, there is also the heart wrenching stuff. Stuff that you never even really considered as being a big thing. Stuff you thought you’d be able to handle with a few coined phrases like ‘don’t worry, as long as you try’, ‘it’s the taking part that counts’ and ‘sticks and stones may break my bones…’ etc.

Brushing it all off as ‘life lessons’ and character building.

I never really thought about how all those kind of things, would also affect me.

Hmmmmm. So here’s the thing.

Totally out of the blue the other night, Eva started sobbing about how hard she was finding school.

Through the kind of sobs that only allow you to say one syllable at a time, she said that she always tried really hard, but still got her spellings wrong and that it was ‘too….tricky….. for…. my….braiiiiiin’.

She also wailed that she never wanted to go to school ever again!! Not even in a bratty way, in a ‘please don’t make me go to that horrible place again mummy’ way.

Honestly, it broke me! I felt like my heart had been sliced in two. She is 5 years old! She isn’t supposed to have worries. She isn’t supposed to feel pressure, or self doubt. Her head is supposed to be filled with Disney princesses and superheroes, not spellings!! The poor kid can't even read yet!!!

Seriously, I wanted to cry with her. I wanted to scoop her up, dry her tears and tell her she never had to go back ever again. I wanted to tell her that no one cares about stupid spelling anyway, I wanted to tell her that her teacher is a big Meanie who I shall be having words with (i won’t) and I wanted to squeeze her so tight and smell her freshly washed hair and never let her go!!!

Of course I didn’t do any of those things, except maybe the squeezing and hair smelling.

I hauled out the good old ‘as long as you try that’s the main thing’ and ‘mummy and daddy are still very proud of you’ and the ‘don’t worry poppet you will get the hang of it, it just takes time, like when you learnt to ride your bike.’ blah blah blah!!

Within minutes she was downstairs, playing with her brother, happy as a clam. This morning, she got ready for school as normal, requested her hair in a bun, and skipped into class like nothing had happened.

Me?? Well I've been a bit of an emotional wreck to be honest!

I just wasn’t ready for all this. Not yet. I thought this part came with the teenage years?? I can’t bear the fact that she has this inner turmoil about school work! She is FIVE!!

Blimey….. All these cruel life lessons were hard enough the first time round, now I have to go through them all again with her!

I’m going to need A LOT of wine!