Thursday 27 September 2012

New School Parent Conduct

So, first four weeks of school done, we're there, it's now just a question of keeping her institutionalised, at something other than Her Majesty's pleasure, until the age of 18. How hard can it be?

We are keen, as parents, we were in the starting blocks about a month before the race was due to begin. Heads down, fingers steepled, feet pressed to the metal. First day arrived, the gun went off and my husband and I were off. Playground chatter before the bell was ludicrous, my mouth was moving far faster than my poor addled brain could cope with, utterances were non sensical, mothers clutched their children to them whilst steering them to the other side of the world. Husband ran round talking nonsense to the men folk. We are the panting, out of control, super excited Cocker Spaniels of the parent world.

Second day, naive teacher types sent our eldest home with paper containing dates and times of meetings and socials with requests for volunteers. My husband and I ripped the sheet from the bag, scrambled for the calendar and divvied up the duties right then and there. Any self respecting parent would have ignored the letter at least for the first month, just to keep a sensible grip of their self respect. Not us, third day of term and my husband was knee deep in women, at the school's fund raising brain storming meeting, as a result he's researching a school bus and taking up architecture to design a suitable school swimming pool, good luck to him. I'm baking anything I can find just on the off chance we might have a visitor from the school. We're very busy!

We had our home visit, having the queen round would probably have been easier. Curtains were ironed, floors were ship shape and Bristol fashion. The dog was made to practise please and thank you as we ran around in a flurry of tidiness and cleanliness very, very much as close to godliness as is humanly possible in this realm. When the teacher and the teaching assistant arrived both me and my husband ran to our "natural" positions which meant neither of us opened the door, eldest child did the honours and ushered both teachers and dogs into the kitchen where insane mother was stirring nothing on the Aga and cool, calm, collected father was making coffee and tea simultaneously. Eldest child sat at kitchen table with teacher and did numbers and letters and parents and teaching assistant sat uncomfortably on the over plumped sofa cushions, trying hard not to spill coffee and or tea on anything whilst listening to the dog try and say please and thank you. A more natural scene you could not have conjured from anywhere. As parents, we made hobbits look run of the mill.

My husband and I have also signed ourselves up to to the "Fun run". There is no fun in run as far as I can see, but I'll be there with my sweat band round my head and leg warmers just above very nearly new trainers, punching the air at the start, without question of  a doubt. I'll probably collapse after about two paces, but it's not the winning, as we tell our girls, it's the taking part. Who cares if you lose all the respect of your peers in the process, you can always win them round in the playground with gabbled words of  absolutely no consequence to anyone whatsoever?

We had our harvest festival concert, to which I rocked up (unknowingly) cool as a cucumber, 10 minutes late. Was then informed that I was in the wrong place, couldn't find the right place so missed out and husband was left to Spaniel pant on his own. He wins brownie points though because he also signed himself up to cook at the "Back to School BBQ", where I wandered around spilling wine over people whilst trying to look thought provoking and nice, sociability does not come easy to me, but my husband manned the BBQ, so there's got to be something in that.

All in all, I am glad that my daughter is only four, because she'll probably not remember the complete incompetent retardedness of her mother. She'll be glad her parents (at least half of them anyway) showed up. She'll take the life lesson that Spaniel is better than Chihuahua, isn't it?


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