The Magic Number
By Tony Scanlan
The change from baby to infant to toddler is so gradual that you don’t actually see it happening.
As soon as they are five though, the toddler days are officially over. As your child’s fifth birthday approaches, casual acquaintances, even strangers will tell you, “Oh, he’ll be starting school soon.”
The magic number is five. The second they turn five they are school kids.
They look pretty much the same as they did the day before, but they cost more on the bus, and old ladies frown at them instead of smiling, when they see them out and about during school hours.
It’s not actually a legal requirement to go to school until six, but it seems parents have a social obligation to get them there at five. It’s as though if they don’t attend school before their five little candles are cold, their whole academic life could be ruined, and anarchy could creep into our society.
It’s true some children are definitely ready for school at, or even before, five, it’s just that they look too small and fragile to be let loose in a playground with several hundred other children, some of whom wouldn’t look out of place in the All Blacks.
My own son turned five recently, and I admit I was a bit apprehensive about school. In fact I’d have to admit to being apprehensive about it since he was born. Even so, as his fifth birthday approached, I dutifully took him for his first school visit.
It did little to ease my worries. The class was very noisy and confusing. Danny clung to my leg like a limpet and didn’t want to join in with any of the activities. After four such visits, we seemed to make a bit of sense of it all, but he still clung to my leg.
My wife took the morning off work to be there for his first official school day. I had the idea that I’d stay in the back of the class all day, in case he needed me.
Apparently I was wrong. My services were not required until after school. The teacher and my wife both thought ‘it best’ if we left him to it. If there was no leg, he couldn’t cling to it. My wife pointed out that he had been left at pre-school occasionally without any problems, so why should school be any different.
This seemed a logical argument and he seemed happy enough, so we left.
I was quite surprised how difficult walking away from the school without him was. I felt that the relationship we had was now over. It was as though I’d never see my little boy again, at least not as he was. I’d heard of mothers being affected this way, I just hadn’t expected it myself.
I spent that day at home trying to keep busy, until it was time to head back, but I kept thinking of the years when it was just me and him all day long.
Our long lazy lunches, our trips to the park. Games of ‘Hide and Seek’, that he never quite got the hang of.
Eventually it came time to head back. I walked into the class expecting to see a sad little face, but he was immersed in cutting out words and gluing them in the right order to make a sentence. He wanted me to help him cut them out. He still isn’t very good with scissors yet.
The teacher said he’d had a ‘great day’. (I’ve since learnt they say that to all the new kids’ parents, even if they’ve screamed all day long.)
On the way home he told me that a girl had accidentally bumped into him in the playground and knocked him over. He said he had got up and stopped crying “even without a cuddle.” He hasn’t had any problems settling into school, he seems to enjoy it, and I’m getting used to leaving him there in the mornings.
He’s mostly the same boy he was before he started school, although now he keeps on insisting we do something ‘fun’. Whether to continue the fun he’s had all day at school, or to make up for lost time, I’m not sure. He’s much better at ‘Hide and Seek’ now though.
