As my son starts school, the hardest lesson will be me learning to let him go
‘WHAT will I learn at big school, mummy?” the fouryear-old wants to know, as he stands in his room wearing his school uniform, adjusting his tie in the manner of a businessman about to strike a multi-million euro deal.
I think he’s hoping the answer will be dinosaur-related, and his days at school will be filled with spirited classroom debates about who would win in a fight between stegosaurus and spinosaurus, just like they are at home.
I don’t want to disappoint him, but I can’t lie to him and I’m pretty certain that the predatory capacity of Mesozoic-era carnivores does not feature on the
Junior Infants curriculum.
So I say that he’ll learn how to draw and how to sing, how to read and how to write, how to add and how to subtract. His eyes glaze over at this last bit, so I hastily reassure him that there’ll surely be some opportunity to pursue paleontological interests at some future point in his educational career.
What I don’t tell him is that this, his first day at school, marks the beginning of the end of one way of life, and the start of another, radically different one.
And the hardest lessons to learn might not be the ones in the textbook.
Drawing to a close are those cosy days at home, when he was the centre of his little universe and everything – parents, grandparents, his devoted minder, and adoring little brother
– orbited around him.
Now he’s joining a bigger, scarier world, where he’ll be just one of nearly 30 small kids clamouring to be heard. Some will be bigger, some smaller, some older, some younger, all with different interests and ways of seeing the world. He’ll learn that not everyone will want to talk about dinosaurs, but that’s OK. He’ll learn that making and keeping friends is one of life’s great treasures and school is the best place to make them; but that it can be hard, and other people are rarely simple. And one day, many years from know, he’ll realise he and his little school pals aren’t the only ones learning something today. For the parents at the school gates, we’re learning how to begin to let them go. And that might be the hardest lesson of all.
Women are wheel deal, gentlemen
AT LONG last, we have definitive proof of what we women have always known: we are far more competent behind the wheel than men.
A new study by insurance price comparison website confused.com reveals women have fewer accidents, make fewer claims on their insurance and are less likely to be convicted of offences like speeding or drink-driving.
The statistics around accidents have repeatedly borne out the fact that women are safer drivers than men, and yet the cliché of “bloody women drivers” is still alive and well, in my experience.
Whenever I stop on a city centre street to park, it is usually only a matter of nanoseconds before a random man appears from the footpath, helpfully holding one hand up authoritatively, while using the other to direct me into place.
It is the parallel-parking equivalent of mansplaining, and while I understand these idiots generally mean well, having lived in the city centre for well over a decade, on-street parking is one of my most finely-tuned skills, and I am confident I could wedge my car into spaces these same men would need a can-opener to get out of.
However, do carry on waving, lads, and keep on looking ridiculous while doing so, because it’s one area where you definitely excel.
Relax, Kim, I can’t keep up either...
INEVER thought I’d say it but I find myself feeling extremely sorry for Kim Kardashian, who has found herself the target of much online derision after she tweeted she was loving the podcast ‘Serial’, and was anyone else listening?
‘Serial’ was hot way back in 2014, when it seemed virtually everyone was tuned into the NPR podcast dissecting a decades-old murder trial, and Kim was mercilessly mocked for being hopelessly out of step with the cultural zeitgeist, but I can sympathise.
I am still waiting to find a window in which to watch that hot new TV show ‘The Sopranos’ and when I finally retire I plan on watching something called ‘Game of Thrones’ which I’ve heard some good things about.
Us girls are busy, right, Kim?