I am just starting my last ever half term in primary and <whispers>... hurrah!

[SonorousBip]

I have had DC at the same primary school for the last 10 years and my last child is leaving at the end of this term. I think we are all ready to move on now . There are two teachers who have taught different dc of mine continuously for the last 5 years, meaning I feel I know them better than some members of my own family. Its nice, but there are only so many ways of saying the same thing at parents evenings and in reports.

Also ... I'll fess up ... I've stopped doing the detailed comb-through with conditioner when we get the nit letter, as we seem to three times a term - just have a bit of a poke around and see if anything is moving.

I will never have to make another sodding costume for World Book Day. Or sit with a forced smile listening to other people's children play the recorder badly (or, dear God, the cello).

The cool indifference of secondary beckons invitingly!

"I don't know what happens to nits between the end of Y6 and beginning of Y7 - maybe they have their own little leavers' assembly and then retire."

PMSL I am crying at my desk over this!

Ive got my pfb dd finishing in 7 weeks to. All i can think it WAHOOOOO! But then i have ds there for another year. The thing I'm looking most forward too? No more having to make polite chat with the other Mums in the playground, this is very antisocial of me but i just hate it. And yes yes yes to no more mothers day meals, class assemblies, inspire day (vile), summer/christmas fetes, easter/christmas productions. No more school run either. Im freeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh I'm envious! My pfb also finishes Primary this year but dd2 has another 3 years to go. I'll have also done a decade by the time I'm released. I'm enjoying this stage of life, love the sense of community around the school but I'll be glad to let go of some of the intrigue and drama.

Oh blimey! DS is in nursery! 7, count 'em, 7, years to go!

Another thing curiously different is allergy related stuff. The primary school is nut free. There are no children with nut allergies in dd's class but even when they were on their residential trip, leaving on a weekend day and getting on a coach outside the school, strictly no nuts were allowed in thier snack packs because it was a school related activity.

Secondary school - whevs.

Be warned a DC in DD's primary class had nits (found out on parent grapevine)...to my knowledge first and only time ever in that class (threadworms were our joy! ) - luckily DD didn't get them ...in fact no one else in the class did have them...DC had got them from older sibling at secondary (And it was a fee paying secondary at that )

And named tupperware ...for the first 3 years of secondary (think this was the last year -yay!) DD1 has had to take a named tub every week for home economics and it has been lost on countless occasions...and comes home with inedible things in it that either I eat with feigned delight ...or it sits in the fridge until the night before she needs it again and gets binned...

(In fact worse - you might even have to provide ingredients for their culinary delights ....you might get lucky though - like us - we pay an amount a year and school provide ingredients ...)

I'm trying to work out how many years I will have done the school run for. Ds1 is 18 this year, so he'll be 20 when dd leaves primary. So does that really make 16years of school runs? Wow. I deserve a medal.

Damn those large age gaps! (4years between all of them, 17, 13 &9)

a 16 year stretch of primary here, though only 8 years in one school, followed by a couple of years of home ed, then a different junior school. i am very much enjoying waving DC off at 8am in my dressing gown rather than having to tramp in the cold and wet to school, making polite conversation.

But secondary is much much worse for little plastic boxes of random FT ingredients, when FT is on a Monday, and the DC doesn't tell you they are cooking till after the supermarkets close on Sunday afternoon. Have met many a parent with a scribbled list in Sainsburys Local buying the same stuff as me .

Yes to the horrors of Food tech unlucky I do have to provide ingredients.

I checked the named --celebrations tin- tupperware last night and it had a green furry blob in there.

It took a while for me to realise it was a bread roll she had made 2 weeks before half term.

I love DS's food tech days. It's like having a caterer.

I did 8 years of driving six miles to First school and back twice a day.

On DS2's last day we got into the car and both cried.

Six years at middle school and now both at High School. No more projects, no more lunch box police, no stupid costumes. No assemblies and no sports days.

Primary School is a distant memory for me (youngest left 3 years ago) but I was saying to my eldest this morning that this would be her last summer half term with all the different things they do (sports day, rewards trips, half day at end of term) as next year she'll have left and only going back for exams - that's a scary thought!

To warn everyone that there are still dressing up days for charity at secondary but they will get it sorted themselves (you hope). This is my last half term (ever) for random tupperware/ odd ingredients for food tech - yippee!

My oldest is 25 and youngest 12, which means I only just escaped the tedium/parental competition that is being a parent of a primary aged kid.

So great to no longer have to wait for the school bus - kids can wait on their own. So great to no longer sit through interminable bloody school plays/concerts/class assemblies (I used to be a primary teacher so it all was a bit reminiscent of 'work' for my liking). So great to no longer have reading books, library books, waste days on stupid costumes/easter egg competitions, etc. Or have to stand in the playground listening to the vacuous opinings of boring people.

I don't even miss watching that stoned parent laughing at kids at a sports day at my kids' snobby church school primary (I moved them to another school) - she's now a tory councillor, probably not surprising. I don't miss the teachers or Head, I got to know well, of their last primary. Or the endless fuss like the time they treated me like a child-killer, for daring to still force my kid to go to school when he got stung by a bee on the way there (I'm from the 1970s - frankly, they're lucky I didn't send him to school when he had actual illnesses). Or them rushing me into school because one or other of the kids had sneezed in a slightly strange manner...

I love it that I never have to see their sports day or lose a day's work for some other trumped up event which I know perfectly well, as a former priary teacher, has no educational value whatsoever (not even World Book Day - oops, I said it).

This reminds me of a conversation I had with two others whilst waiting for the carol concert to start in the cold church. It was my last one, another had one more and another mum, with her preschooler sat next to her, said I've 7 more years of this !

I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I know I'll be sad to think of how little my DC once were, but, mainly, I'll be glad to never have to sit through another class assembly again!

The worst is yet to come though.. the leavers assembly which last time around was an extended display of each child's individual "talents", especially the musical and dancing ones. Then the obligatory baby photos that have me welling up despite promising myself that I wouldn't.

I printed out a calendar this morning to pin on DS2's wall with a count down to the last day of primary (he's glad to be leaving too). 36 school days to go, including the INSET day.

My eldest is only in Y1 and I have already had enough ..... [weep]

Thanks to a large age gap between dc2 & 3 I will be going to primary school for 17 years...17 fecking years!

I have been at primary continuously since 2002. The last 3 of my 6 dc are there. One leaves this year. The youngest is still in year 3 so another three years after this. That'll be 16 bloody years without a break. At least we're done with the infants.

Gah, ds is in year 6 and I still have 2 costumes to cobble together. Also, at the secondary school he is going to (dd in yr 9 there atm) they still do world book day in yrs 7 & 8

Oh and the nits? DD1 in year 8 still bloody gets them. My year 10 ds also had them recently ( I blame his very curly haired girlfriend!) Infact my year 8 dd has had more cases of nits at secondary than she ever did at primary. It's almost constant. Luckily listerine original gets rid of them everytime.

I did 13 years of primary school with three DDs. I was enormously relieved when the youngest (now just short of 13) went on to secondary school.

No more stupid dressing up days. There has only been one costume day in all of the time mine have been at secondary school, and that was when DD1's school was celebrating its centenary and suggested they come in wearing the school's 1907 uniform!! . No others though.

No more parents' assemblies. No more pasting on a fake smile pretending to enjoy the hell that is the school summer and Christmas Fayres. No more school sports days either. No more freezing my arse off in the church for Harvest Festival, which they once or twice ridiculously managed to make last for three and a half hours before pruning it to sensible levels (that was hell when I had a baby and toddler with me). Woooooooo hoooooooo!

No more lunch box police either, and definitely no more school run.

All schools have their foibles of course, but primary school bollocks is much more "in-your-face" than that at secondary school.

I did do a little happy dance when I saw the annual thread on MN about costumes for World Book Day, and realised that I would NEVER AGAIN have to suffer that.....
BUT
life is trickier when you don't know their teachers, when you don't know their friends, when you don't know their friends' parents, and when you have to sort out flipping cookery ingredients without any notice (not from the school, but via my dc)... it almost makes you a little wistful for Primary school again but not the nits.