Dress Up Dramas

Oh, how I adore a school dress up day! Said no parent ever. OK, so seeing all the excited kids running into class this morning in their little outfits was very cute but behind each one of those little get-ups is a load of effort, time and/or money and almost certainly a good few arguments.

It is World Book Day this week. I think it is actually tomorrow but, for some reason, the school did the dressing up element today. We were, thankfully, given plenty of notice about this one (which is not always the case with these things) and I was feeling pretty smug about being rather well prepared. I had decided to go down the buying and borrowing route, rather than actually making anything this time. Cheap enough, through the power of eBay.

So, I’ve had a little ladybird costume and a Peter Pan outfit in the cupboard for weeks. The ladybird is from Julia Donaldson’s What the Ladybird Heard, a book that M really loves (and you can also buy a ladybird skirt, boppers, wings and wand on eBay for about a fiver so everyone’s a winner). And Peter Pan? Well, it was cheap and easy. OK, so H hasn’t actually read Peter Pan, but he has seen the Disney film lots of times. That must count, right? Besides, after weeks of discussion, with him rejecting all my ideas but not coming up with any suggestions of his own, I gave up and opted for the boy in green.

So, there I was, feeling all smug. Until Friday. H came running out of class saying “Mummy, we have a problem”. H often finds problems where there are none but I could see that he thought this one was serious as he had a very earnest look on his face and his lip was beginning to go. A sure sign that a meltdown was on the way if I didn’t nip it in the bud.

I got H to take a deep breath to calm down and explain what was wrong. It seems there had been a pep talk in class from the teacher saying that it was very important that the kids dress up for World Book Day as a character from a book they have read and love, not just any old character. Not only that but each kid would be expected to stand up in class, explain why they chose their character and read an extract from the book.  Oh dear.

A lot of kids wouldn’t have worried about this 11th hour request. Many would shrug it off and go in dressed as Spider-Man or Elsa, just because they wanted to. Not our H. He takes everything he is told in school very seriously. He said there was no way he could go as Peter Pan because he hadn’t read it. He was beginning to get tearful and was clearly very worried about it. He said he simply had to go as his favourite book character, Stick Dog.

H isn’t the most widely read 7-year old. Until recently, he was pretty reluctant to pick up a book at all, to be honest. Then along came Stick Dog. He is the star of a series of funny and easy to read books by Tom Watson that H has simply fallen in love with. He has read these books by himself and I’ve read them to him and M as bedtime stories. They roll about laughing at them and love the pictures. The only problem with H wanting to go dressed as Stick Dog is that Stick Dog looks literally as his name suggests. A stick dog. Like a stick man, but a dog. How the hell do you make a costume for that?!

Well, it was either face a weekend of sobbing and misery or relent and say goodbye to Peter Pan and hello to Stick Dog. It is amazing what you can do with an old Shreddies box, a lamb ears headband from last Easter, sticky tape and crayons. Of course H made hardly any of it but, after an hour or so, I had created a sort of Stick Dog headband/hat and dug out some brown clothes. H was utterly delighted with the end result and went in this morning happily wagging his doggy tail (made from one leg of an old pair of my tights, tied to his belt loop) and clutching his Stick Dog book.

I am actually very grateful to Stick Dog and his author Tom, so I wasn’t too upset about having to make him. Before Stick Dog came into our lives, I was pulling my hair out trying to get H to discover the joy of reading. So I suppose it is not only right but also a fitting tribute to this most excellent canine that we made an effigy of him to mark World Book Day. Thank you Stick Dog.

So, both kids happy. All good, right? Wrong. As if getting out the house with three kids wasn’t hard enough, things went particularly sour this morning. All this exciting dressing up led to a massive 2-year old meltdown from little T.

I was prepared for him to be jealous of the costumes so I took him to the dressing up box and helped him pick what he wanted to wear. He opted for a fairy and I duly fitted him out with wings, a wand (slightly bent but fixed with sellotape) and boppers, like his big sister. He was happy with that for about 30 seconds before deciding that he actually had to be exactly like his sister and dress as a ladybird. Well,we only had one ladybird outfit, natch. Cue much screaming and yelling, refusing to get jumper and shoes on, etc, etc.

We finally got to school and were surrounded by excited kids dressed in all sorts of weird and wonderful outfits that their poor parents had created/bought and, for a moment, all the trials suddenly felt like they were worth it. Both my two were full of smiles, delighted to be showing off their costumes to their mates, happily chatting about the books their characters were from. I’d finally got to the point beyond the stress and effort when I could remember what World Book Day dressing up was all supposed to be about.

So, I walked my moany toddler home (minus wings which he had throw off in disgust because they were not red and spotty), had a cuppa and breathed a sigh of relief. It was done. Until the next dress up day, that is. And just think, in a couple of years, when T is at school, I’ll have THREE outfits to put together for World Book Day! My cup runneth over.

Oh, and if anyone needs a Peter Pan costume, I have one going begging.

Happy World Book Day.

The Trouble With Targets

School is hard. I’m finding it a lot harder this time round than I did as a child. When you have a kid that finds it more difficult to do the things that many kids seem to breeze through, who is falling short of the new impossible targets, it can be very hard indeed.

My boy doesn’t worry about it. He enjoys school. He is cheerful and content in class, blissfully unaware – for the most part – that he isn’t measuring up to government standards, or that I am sometimes tied up in knots of worry. But my boy hasn’t read the rules. He hasn’t seen the list of things he is supposed to know by the end of the year. I have. And I know he isn’t going to tick all the right boxes. He may be funny and sweet and clever with a special and original way of looking at the world, but he struggles to join up his letters, so he fails. He can’t tell me what 7 X 8 is, so he misses the mark.

School work didn’t bother me at his age. I found it easy. But that is just because I was lucky. My head happens to work in the way they wanted it to. My boy’s head is a world of different. He doesn’t fit the mould, which makes him both wonderful and worrying. He doesn’t learn by rote. He lets thing wash over him. Some things stick, most don’t.

My boy is bendy too. He is hyper-mobile. Excellent for gymnastics. Not so good for handwriting. The look of concentration on his dear little face while he tries to join an F to an L is adorable. But you don’t get points for adorable. You don’t get points for effort either. These days, you either join up your writing or your writing is deemed to be substandard, no matter how perfect the content.

My boy is incredible. The extra effort he has to put in must make his school day a lot harder than it is for most. But he never wants to miss school. He never feigns illness to have a duvet day. He skips in happily.

My boy is the most loyal friend you could wish for. He gets on with everyone but he is devoted to the special few, his very best mates. He looks out for them, is kind, would never be deliberately hurtful or play them off against each other. He is all wide-eyed innocence and shock in the face of such behaviour from others. But there are no tick boxes for kindness and loyality.

I am a worrier. I always have been. My husband and my parents tell me not to sweat it, that he is only seven, that he will find his niche and it will all fall into place soon enough. They are probably right. I really hope they are right. But I can’t help but worry because I want to protect him. I want to protect him from feeling like he has failed because he hasn’t ticked the right boxes. Because the skills and talents he has are not valued as highly as those others have, so they score zero.

I am on a learning curve that I don’t think the government understands. I am learning that hitting the academic mark isn’t the only measure of a child’s success. My amazing little boy is teaching me that. He has a wonderful attitude, is positive and keen, and I worry about him losing that with the realisation that he is struggling with some of their targets.

Our school is great at supporting kids like H who need a little extra help with things. They see and value the whole child and give him all the help he needs. But so much of it is out of their hands. These tick boxes come from on high, from politicians attempting to woo their aging conservative voters who think that learning the times tables by heart was good enough for them, so should be inflicted upon the youth of today.

But I am overstating things, as I am prone to do. He is doing OK. He is keeping up, just about. I have been so impressed by how he has improved with his reading and writing recently that I was feeling pretty confident. But at a parents’ meeting at school last night all the targets were listed as the new curriculum kicks in. Standards have gone up. Reaching an acceptable level is now that much harder. This is pretty scary when your child wasn’t even hitting the old averages.

I sat through the meeting, biting my lip, trying to keep the bubbling emotion inside me at bay, as I heard about the hoops that have to be jumped through to make my boy ‘secondary ready’ in just three and a half short years. There are targets on the list that he won’t hit this year, no matter what any of us do. He may not hit them at all. Does it really matter in life if he cannot join up his letters and recite his twelve times table? Of course not. But being perceived to have failed to meet the standard might just matter. There may come a point when empty tick boxes matter a lot. Because there may come a time when he will care deeply.

We are certainly not alone. That much I know. There are parents up and down the country worrying about their little ones. The creative ones, the ones who think differently, the ones who have a lot to offer but not necessarily the things on the government’s list. There will be other parents worried in his school, in his class. Us worriers will read the list of targets and our hearts will sink. We will work extra hard, do extra maths and reading at home, work on our kids’ confidence with lots of praise for the small wins.

But no matter what I do, I am certain there will be empty tick boxes come July. There will be empty tick boxes in three and half years too, on the eve of secondary school. Because my wonderful, kind, creative, imaginative little lad does not always fit in the box, let alone know how to tick it. Because one size does not fit all. Because no matter how fantastic your school is, the system of measuring achievement for little ones in this country is too rigid. It does not leave room to appreciate the many talents and incredible facets of the wonderfully varied little people that we are raising.

This makes me sometimes sad and sometimes cross. But mostly it just makes me worry and wish there was a better way.

What we have to do is help him to do his best and make sure he understands that there is more to life than ticking boxes. We have to make damn sure that he knows that we appreciate him for who he is and for what he is good at. Even if the powers that be don’t.

My brilliant boy.

Transition

We’re back from a really brilliant week in Somerset. Yes, I know I said it was going to be crap (see Expectations: Keeping it Real) but my low expectations really paid off – we had a great time. OK, so it may have rained almost every day but we soldiered on despite the weather, in true British holiday style, and had lots of fun. A memorable open top bus ride through Cheddar Gorge in driving rain is something not to be forgotten.

We are back and so begins the long anticipated transition. It is Back to School time. Change is afoot for all of us. H moves into Key Stage 2, M starts in Reception and T and I become a duo, home alone together. Momentous times that we have talked about and prepared for over months are finally here. M is beyond excited. I am still trying to get my head around my little girl starting school and having just one pre-schooler at home again.

When I say this transition is much anticipated, I don’t mean I’ve been desperate to ship the kids off to school. Far from it. I’ve actually had a really brilliant summer with them this year and definitely the best since H started school three years ago. The first two summers were a challenge with a young baby so the only way was up – I won’t go into details on our first summer break with three kids aged five, two and newborn. Suffice to say I was relieved when September came round.

Not so this year. I’ll actually be a bit sad to pack H off on Thursday because he has been brilliantly behaved and really good company for the most part. But he has missed his mates and will probably go back with a spring in his step. And I dare say I’ll enjoy the slightly quieter days with him back at school too.

M’s school anticipation madness was reaching fever pitch in May/June and I was genuinely alarmed that spending a summer with her in full manic mode would be hideous and tantrum-filled, but she really calmed down as the summer wore on and the big day came into focus. She is still counting the sleeps but thankfully without punctuating each day with multiple meltdowns.

And finally to my Baby T. His first two summers were tricky but this year he has been a delight. He still has plenty of moments – what two year old doesn’t? But the last couple of months have seen so many significant changes in his behaviour, not least that he is now chatting away with the best of them, which is just adorable and makes life so much easier. I can now see the two of us quite happily whiling away our days home alone together now, discussing the latest Thomas episode as we have post-lunch cuddles on the sofa. And man, does that kid love a cuddle?

So, big changes are coming. I’m sure there will be hiccups along the way but, after this brilliant week away, where everyone got on really well, I feel happily calm and ready for it all. I also think that everyone else is ready for the transition too. M has been geared up for about a year, and I am finally able to picture my life with just my cheeky T at home (T, incidentally, has no clue what is coming, but takes everything in his stride and will probably be delighted to have me to himself).

If I’m honest, I suppose the one I am still worried about most is H, my eldest. The change from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2 (first to middle school) is a big one, even when you stay in the same building. I just hope he is armed with the tools he needs to take it on. Time will tell and I think a relaxing summer is just what he needed to prepare him for the times ahead. He is just still such a baby in his ways and such a gentle soul.

The main thing about these big transitions isn’t so much the event, it is the thinking about it, dwelling on the context. Knowing that it marks an end, as much as a beginning. I’m not one of those parents who wistfully hang on to every ‘last’, wishing my kids younger. I won’t be sobbing over M’s nursery uniform. But it is still worth a moment of reflection.

I’ll never again have my pudgy cheeked baby girl at home. I loved that phase, but my M just isn’t that baby any more. She is a proper little girl, ready to take on the world. She is very smart and her questions are already far bigger than the confines of her currently very small world. She needs so much more, and I will send her off to school next week feeling very proud of the bright and confident girl she is becoming, not full of sadness for what she used to be.

That said, I can’t guarantee I won’t shed the odd tear on the day. It is, after all, a pretty big event.

Tomorrow sees the start of September. So today, 31st August, is the real year end for all those parents and kids out there. Today is a suitably rainy end to the summer. A days of endings, before the big beginnings start.

Good luck to all the kids heading back to school and special good luck to all those dear little new starters. Very big steps ahead for tiny feet.