Is it just me or does any one else's tummy do flipps when they have to go into a school?

[LynetteScavo]

I'm OK with Primary schools, but Secondary schools give me the willies.

I have to drop of a form at a school I've applied for DS1 to attend, although it is our 4th choice. My tummy did summersaults when we went to look round, and now I can't get up the courage to drop off this form. (I think I'll post it, and blame it arriing late on postal strike.)

I've decided this is a sign that my DS shouldn't go to this school. Am I just being a chicken?

Lynette, I get this every blardy day at primary

Did you have a bad time at school yourself?

I am also terrified

I didn't have a bad time at school, but those years are just so INTENSE aren't they? It all comes flooding back

thnk it depends on the schools there are some rough as burnt toast schools out there.

I work in a school and get that sometimes . Like this morning, when I went out to the mobile classroom and got a whiff of that particular smell that they have. Regressed by about thirty years. Mostly I'm OK with primaries, though. But last weekend... at a parents' talk in one of the secondaries we're looking at for dd1...

Oh the smell!

It jsut takes you back doesn't it!

It is a real problem, at parents evening I really feel for some parents who seem so scared by just being there, let alone waiting to hear what I have got to say!

I get the same feeling going back after the 6 week break and lots of my colleagues do too.

Oh yes!!

I went into DSs sports hall yesterday for parents evening and its the same primary school I went to!

I almost started to cry with all the memories flying back into my head, it freaked me out!

I went back to my old school last week for an open ay, yes, my tummy went flip and I was suddenly terrified that I had forgotten my PE kit. I can sympathise with you. It just shows how important those years are to one's cognitive development.

Have you felt like this in other schools you have visited? If not, maybe go with what your base instinct is telling you about that particular school.

Good luck.

You do need to drop the form in though. If it's oversubscribed, they'll treat yours as a late application, and might not accept post delays as a reason to jump the queue.

Just seen it's your fourth choice, so hope you'll get him into one of your preferred schools anyway.

Its the teachers that make me regress. Despite every one of my Dt's teachers being lovely I just cant relate to them on an adult to adult basis. I am still a pupil despite being old enough to being Dt1's teacher who I met yesterday for a parent teacher interview, Also when I bump into them outside of school i feel the same way as I used to do when meeting my own teachers, a sort of wanting but not wanting them to see us

One of the reasons I love DD's school is that it doesn't have that smell. I've been other places that have and almost instantly I start to feel queasy and anxious....urgh

What is that smell BTW? And yes, my tummy does double somersaults. Must be some trauma I've buried in the back of my memory!!

Combination of rubber gym mats, chalk and institutional food.

when DS2 was small I tok him to swimming lessons at my old school because it was convenient. I stopped after a term and took him somewhere further away. I got panicky every time I walked in even though the layout seemed very different. Just going through the same door made me feel very odd. I wasn't unhappy there, so I can't really understand my reaction.

I hate it, if only for the frightening realisation of how things have changed (for the worse) in the past 20 or so years.

The downright creepiness of 5 year olds in uniform at an ordinary County Infants. The horror of going in to a parents' evening at 5pm and there still being kids on the premises in after-school clubs and the like. The increasingly Soviet propaganda for citizenship and RE and the like, at turns laughable and deeply sinister. The obsessive controlling back-covering and cotton-wool wrapping which means can't do as is natural, and run out to meet Mummy at the school gate, but Mummy must go to the child's classroom and collect them.

Quite horrible.

After a year of taking my daughter to school I'm finally used to being allowed near the office and staffroom. Infact, encouraged even!

Since my last experience of education was Cambridge (with its scary lecturers - Germaine Greer included!) and a secondary experience of not being allowed near the staffroom, I find it really weird that I'm allowed near the staff! And that they are nice!

Yes - and I just didn't anticipate this at all! Went to help in reception today and was SO nervous. Secondary school might make me pass out cold.

I do at primary, if Ihave to write a note or something in DS1 homework diary, I cannot spell or even string words together, I have to get out the dictionary!