And the Adventure Begins ...

This week, Emily (finally) attended school all day for the very first time as she embarked on the adventure that is year 1.

There is of course mixed emotions with the youngest of the clan reaching this milestone. There’s the elation that a stay a home Mum might be tempted to indulge in as she is left with four whole days of the week where she has the opportunity to do what ever she likes for 6 hours a day (even if it is cleaning). There’s the realization that another step has passed, that there’s another kid to pester into doing homework and of course that time marches inexorably on.

Mostly its been very positive. Emily is at the same school that she attended kindergarten, so there weren’t any real transitional traumas and given her age and level of intelligence, I’d say that on the whole, she was excited by the prospect of getting to go to school and continuing to grow her fledgling knowledge.

Then last night, after day 3 of school, I went to put Emily to bed. She was most upset and told me that she needed to see Mummy. Caroline happened to be playing golf, so I told Emily that she’d not get home for a while longer yet, so she would have to put up with me (which in the past has been more than sufficient to keep her happy). She wasn’t going to have a bar of it and was very distraught. I took her upstairs, read her a story, made sure that she had ‘little husky’ and she seemed to have calmed down, but at the prospect of my leaving, the blubbering began again. What caught me by surprise was that this was real blubbering, not that fake, I’m winding you around my finger stuff that I usually get.

I probed a little to try and discover its source and asked if something had happened at school. Well that set her right off. First she just clammed up and then the tears flowed. I was worried that someone might have been picking on her (though its hard to believe that Emily would let that happen) but it turned out that someone had told her a scary story about their friend’s sister who had ended up dead (or something along those lines). Either way, it had her petrified and only Mummy coming home was ever going to fix it.

At the point that she said to me, “Can I stay home from school tomorrow?” with fear all but oozing from the pores of her skin, I was crushed. I wanted to find out who the little bugger was that had told her the story and go pay them a visit. I would have done a little more than tell a scary story too. As it stands, Caroline got home and managed to settle the little girl and she slept soundly right through the night. I haven’t yet heard how she got on in getting her to school.