Guest Post: ‘How I am going to cope with school this year?’

“I remember just a couple of months ago actively counting down the last days of school, looking forward with glee to the holidays.  As much as I am “enjoying” the holidays I am trying hard to imagine why I was in such a rush to start them.  I cast my mind back and realise there were always certain activities that preceded this thinking

• Making school lunches.  Little Pencil’s school lunch preparation is a nightmare unto itself.  Whilst rummaging in the fridge looking for suitable spreads my mind would often wander to days where lunch is eaten at home and copious amounts of peanut butter can be served with no risk of anyone dying from an anaphylactic reaction.
• Writing love letters.  Every school day I write two notes – one to go with recess and one to go with lunch. When you try to come up with different ways of saying “have a lovely day and I love you”, twice a day, 5 days a week, 7 weeks at a time – you will get where I am coming from.
• Getting to school. Little Pencil loves school.  He has absolutely no issues about spending the day with his friends at all.  But getting him there?  Another story.  There is always something on TV that he has to watch before he can brush his teeth, some paragraph he has to finish before he can put on his clothes, some song he has to sing before he can eat his breakfast, some game he has to finish before he gets in the car, some story he has to tell me before he gets out of the car.  
• Washing uniforms. I often dream of what bodily harm I could inflict on the person that decided a white school shirt was a brilliant idea for a little boy.  I am sure that I would be excused by any court of law when I find that person and tattoo him with texta, stain his body with cranberry juice and then smudge his face so that each freckle obtains a new and more absurd colour.  Little Pencil has a white school shirt.  Bad?  Yes.  But it gets worse.  The white school shirt has the school emblem on the pocket and in the infinite wisdom of the uniform manufactures this emblem cannot be bleached.  Well it can.  But this results in the most hideous cacophony of colours that you have ever had the misfortune of seeing right there on his chest – where the emblem would have been if you had never bleached the shirt.
• Supervising homework. I used to think that I was a patient mum, a tolerant and understanding mother that had the benefit of a background in education and could really help my child with his literacy and learning.  That was before I had to supervise my own child’s homework.  Hello tedium!  Maybe it is the fault of the people who assign the boringly mind-numbing homework, maybe it is because the poor child has already been concentrating for 7 hours at school or maybe I am just an impatient person who would rather scrub moss off rocks in the garden than watch my child write out spelling words ad nauseum while moaning that his wrist hurts.  Oh and did I mention that I hate messy work and that my son is a boy and he is 8 and mostly his work is messy?

So this year I have decided to try something new in order to really maximise my enjoyment of the school year.

• Lunch will be ordered from the canteen EVERY SINGLE DAY.  The funding for this exercise will come from the monies raised when we sell the love letters from last year for other suckers mothers to use.  (Could be tricky finding a mother that has the same neuroses as me and a child of the same name but we will persevere)
• I am going to scotch guard Little Pencil’s jumpers and make him wear a jumper over his shirt every day, regardless of weather conditions.  I understand scotch guarding clothes is not the norm but I am not sure why.  I will wipe his jumper down once a week (although I suspect that it will walk away be itself at the end of week 2)
• I am going to lock myself in the laundry during homework time.  There is no way anyone in this house is going to enter the laundry so they will never find me.  I will still be there when it is time to get ready for school

Do you have any resolutions for the school year?  Any ways you make the organisation of it all more bearable? Can you share them?  I might just adopt them if I get out of the laundry”

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