‘Last day? You must be feeling so sad!’ the lady behind the counter says to me as I buy celebratory sweets with my 11-year-old daughter. ‘The years go by so quickly, don’t they?’
I smile wistfully and nod. But the truth is, the sweets are as much a celebration for me as they are a treat for my daughter on her last day of primary school. Unlike other mums, who were lamenting at the school gates and on social media their little darlings’ last day before ‘big school’, I’ve been longing for it for years.
With three children – Charlie, 16, Eddie, 13, and Jemima – I’ve endured 12 years of primary school, and I am well and truly over it.
For me, the years have been a confusing cocktail of resentment at the forced over-involvement and feelings of mum guilt over not doing enough. And I’m delighted that, now they’ll all be in secondary school come September, I’ll largely be free of it at last.
Because the level of engagement required in your child’s primary-school education is mind-boggling. I’ve got no idea how working mums are meant to keep up.
In the last two weeks of term alone we had sports day, a leavers’ assembly, an end-of-term awards meeting, a ‘transition to secondary school day’, a ‘break the rules day’ (horror) and, as if that weren’t enough, a school trip to a local farm park.
My job as a freelance journalist requires flexibility, and as such I haven’t always been able to commit to baking a cake, helping out at the school fair or making a costume. Yet there’s always one fragrant working mum who seems to do it all effortlessly, and in heels, too (which I gave up wearing in the pandemic).
My boys never appeared to mind that much if I got involved but my daughter always notices and comments if I’m not there at events, which fills me with guilt.
‘With three children – Charlie, Eddie and Jemima – I’ve endured 12 years of primary school,’ writes Georgina Fuller, ‘and I am well and truly over it’
There’s always one fragrant working mum who seems to do it all effortlessly, and in heels too, she says
The level of engagement required in your child’s primary-school education is mind-boggling
My apparent ‘failings’ as a mother meant the prospect of facing the parents at the school gates every day filled me with dread.
I used to try to get the school run out of the way as quickly as possible, arriving either late or early to avoid the scrum. It was always the same stay-at-home-mums in yoga gear standing around afterwards chatting and – though most were kind (‘Don’t worry I was late, too!’) – I wondered what they found to talk about each morning. Though I love my career, I couldn’t help feeling grudgingly envious.
But even when your physical presence isn’t required, primary-school parenting still finds ways to make demands on your time.
I’ve endured a daily deluge of messages across multiple school WhatsApp groups. There’s always someone posting something about homework (‘Anyone know what the spellings are this week?’), sharing their unsolicited opinions about that activity or this teacher, or asking where to buy waterproof trousers for the upcoming school trip. Just leave me in peace!
Perhaps one of the reasons I struggled so much at the school gates was being that mum with my middle child.
When he was seven, Eddie was diagnosed with autism, sensory processing disorder and ‘demand avoidance’, which means it’s really difficult to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do. I was frequently called in to deal with meltdowns and accidents.
Some parents were sympathetic, like the dad who’d message me about the small acts of kindness he had seen from my son, including when he went to sit with his crying daughter in the playground.
On the other hand, there was the mother who wanted Eddie removed from her son’s class because she deemed him disruptive (even though he had a full-time teaching assistant).
And the mum I was about to ask out for drinks… until I learned she’d complained about my son. Apparently she didn’t want her boy to hang around with mine outside of school. ‘Don’t worry, autism is not contagious,’ I wanted to say.
I felt constantly paranoid and judged for Eddie’s behaviour, which added a layer of stress on top of the existing weight of parental expectations.
But even with the other two, there were constant small stresses that created a palpable sense of pressure.
‘Big school’ has proved to be much more civilised all round.
There’s no sports day, for starters, and after more than a decade of standing around making small talk at school gates, I love the fact I don’t even have to get out of the car when I drop my eldest off at the bus stop in the morning.
And I’ve never had a call from the school office about administering Calpol or asking me to bring in a swimsuit or sunhat.
Having said that, I wouldn’t have missed my daughter’s last assembly for the world. She did a beautiful duet with a friend of When I Grow Up from the musical Matilda, which brought a tear to my eye.
Seeing the look of joy on her little face when she spotted me in the crowd was worth missing that work call for.
And in that moment, I forgot all about the years of school runs and thought that, maybe, just maybe, the lady in the shop had a point.
