DS has just started his second week in reception. It'd bloody awful, miserable and I hate every moment of it.
Firstly, getting up early is just dreadful. I'm not a morning person. I can set various different alarms, with different tones on different devices and I don't hear a single one. I have to rely on poor DH to wake me up. Sometimes I don't hear him and he has to flick me with water.
Before I had DS I had this problem with working FT too. The drudge of waking up at an ungodly hour five days a week. Spending all day in an environment you'd rather not be in with people you'd rather not be with. I'm terrible with routine and having commitments.
Then there's navigating the school run which is the worst kind of torture and you have to do it twice a day. Getting there early enough to find somewhere within walking distance to park or end up trudging miles in the pissing rain. All the parents seem to know each other already and stand around chatting in cliques.
DS is incredibly shy and struggle socially. He seems to get overlooked, forgotten and ignored. I worry dreadfully about him. He doesn't know how to interact with the other children. I fear he's going to get lost in the system both socially and educationally. He didn't eat his Yoghurt one day at school because he couldn't open it. My fault for sending something he couldn't open but I felt terrible he wasn't confident enough to ask one of the lunch time supervisors for help.
I can't help but feel it's wrong as a society that we inflict this on our four year old children. Dragging them out of bed when it's still dark, ignoring their natural body clock, shoving a slice of toast down their throats and sending them off into an unfamiliar environment five days a week. DS has only just turned four and can't yet wipe his own bum. I dread him doing a poo at school and prey that he at least does it towards the end of the day so he doesn't have to spend long covered in his own shit. He still has to be reminded to drink and every day so far he's come home with his water bottle still full to the rim.
It feels so wrong to send a just turned four year old into an environment where he has no help with wiping his bum and no encouragement to drink.
Before anyone starts, I don't for one minute blame the school or DS' teachers. They are brilliant. My issue is with the system itself. The society that requires us to send our children into this environment.
Yes, I know I don't have to. I could homeschool. But it's not that easy is it. Society isn't set up for parents to home school. Mostly, both parents need to work outside the home full time just to keep a roof over their heads.
Nursery was a far better environment. Ds went 15 hours a week. Enough for him to spend time with people outside rhe immediate family and enough for me to have a bit of time to get things done without him in tow. We could choose the hours best suited to us and what worked best for DS. Drinking wasn't an issue. He had help when using the toilet.
I know there was the option to defer school for a year and keep him in nursery for another year but we simply couldn't afford to do this. Also, DS was ready for school in an educational sense just not in an emotional and social sense.
The house feels empty without him too. I feel his absence in the silence.
Just musing really. It's nice to get my thoughts out.
Every day I pick him up from school he isn't himself. He's tired and emotional and has a tantrum over something minor before we've even walked through the front door. It's like he's holding himself in all day and letting it out when he's back with me.
He didn't even manage the first week at school, he caught covid on day four!