Thursdays Child Has Far to Go!

God I hate Thursdays!


It’s so close to the weekend but not quite Friday.

It’s like a big tease; you can have this cake but not just yet just watch it for a while.
Drool.....

Thursday is also the last day of my daughters 3 day a week preschool.

So Thursday mornings have become hectic now for a number of reasons.

First off my wife works as a high school teacher, which means she leaves the house by 6am.

It’s left to me to get my daughter up, dressed, washed, fed, and ready for school.

Now I am not complaining about this at all, in fact in some sort of masochistic way I like it, it means I get to spend a little alone time with her every day.

However the novelty of school has generally worn off she is no longer excited bobbing up and down like a jack in the box on speed as she was on her first day.

Now she is more like a teenager.

I go into her room to wake her up, she grunts at me.

I give her, her daily morning milk; she drinks and lays back down with no intention of clambering out of her cozy dwelling.

It’s Now 7.30; school starts at 8.15 and is a 5 minute drive away.

She finally gets up after I try multiple verbal attack sequences from,

“Ok you can stay home”

to

“Your friends are all up and ready for school”.

No one tactic ever works it depends on her mood.

So finally at 7.55 we are ready to go, and the last minute checks begin as if I’m about to launch a space rocket, and if I don’t get them right I may just explode.

Snack? Check

Hat, Scarf, Coat? Check.

Child? Check

If I don’t follow this rigorous checklist something will go wrong, I learnt that in week 2 when I forgot her snack.

Half way to school, I stopped the car as something was gnawing on my brain, and it’s not the zombie I was hoping for.

Damn it, I forgot the snack.

I then for a moment consider the consequences of sending her to school without the snack, how bad can it be? I think to myself.

I have had the same conversations with my brain on some mornings when I initially get up to take her to school. What would happen if she didn’t go today, I’m so tired, I’m being selfish?

The Donald duck angel and devil comes to mind.

But then all the grown up parenting thoughts flood in and take over.

She will get upset if she has nothing, but weighing in also just for a second was the

“What will her teacher think of us?” thought.

It’s the embarrassment of the situation to us as an adult, being thought of as an irresponsible parent.

Akin to the nervousness you see in the eyes of the mother of the crying child in the supermarket.

She scans the area like a terminator looking for the evil stares from other shoppers.

If she spots just one condescending look, it’s bad news for the child.

At this point the mother’s tone of voice is abruptly taken over by that of Satan.

In short sharp sentences she begins to growl, every word having a pause in between.

“Just - you - wait - til – you – get - home – do –you – under- stand –me?”

Or my personal favorite,

“Keep – crying – and – I – will – give – you – something – to cry – about “

Never quite understood that one myself, but that’s another story.

Whenever I witnessed these altercations I was always waiting for the little kid to say something like “Well actually mother no I don’t understand you, maybe you would like to retract your talons

and attempt to communicate with me again on a more understanding/caring level as opposed to trying to scare the be jebus out of me”.

That day I drove back home, grabbed the snack and darted back out.

When push came to shove, I had already established in my mind that actually I don’t give a crap what the teacher thinks of me as a parent, I am only concerned with my daughters well being.

So I get her into the car this morning, and then proceed to have a five minute conversation with my girl to explain the basics of condensation.
She wanted to know why she was exhaling smoke.

I’m not sure how much of it she truly understood, but at least she knows the word condensation now.

Being a Daddy is so much more than being just Dad.

You are a Math teacher, Science Teacher, Language Teacher, Sociology Teacher and just about every other teacher there is.

We should not forget this, as we will be and should be our child’s greatest teacher of all.

Day 1 : Welcome Back Class

Its -3, with wind chill making it more like -13.
Temperature,weather conditons rarely seem to affect them.
They gather like a flock of vultures ready to feed off scraps of the bewieldered and confused.
I watch them, forming into their little groups, clicks, gangs.
There seem to be very few loners out there.
The overal mentality it seems is to join one of these gangs.
It makes you feel safe, wanted, protected.
But this is not some prison in Texas.
This is parenting in my daugters Catholic School.

I wish I could honestly say that my experiences so far were isolated to this school alone,
however it seems that quite a few parents that ive discussed my experiences with, know it all too well.
So far my interaction with these gangs have been minimal, for one im a Dad, and it seems that apart from a few Dads most are scarce here.Those that do seem to hang around act more like bewieldered guard dogs.
Secondly my daughter is only in Pre School, and im sure the influences of thes "Gangs" will take affect more as she grows up and starts to want to take part in things.
However I do pay close attention to the goings on around me, i listen , i observe and i will report.

Mom Gangs, the formation of groups of mostly female parents who secretly run your childs school.
The PTA it seems has moved away from being  a concerned group of parents wishing to monitor the schools progress as a whole, into an elitist organization which can make anyones life a misery.
Pupil, Parent, Teacher no one is safe.

My very first interation with these people came on parents evening before the school term started in September.
I had never been to a Catholic school before and honestly found the whole thing quite amusing.
My Wife and I entered our daughters soon to be Pre School Classroom,
there were already groups formed.
They would look you up and down, feeling you out with a stare.
Huddled around Pre school tables like Giants at a dwarf conference.
Some dressed overly casual, some dressed as if they were going to a club.
Over done eye liner, and wafting stench of Armani perfume.
The Pre School teacher introduced herself and then gave a very minimal rundown of what the children would be doing that year.
Then the pastor fellow came in and spent more time talking about religon and the family.
My wife elbowed me several times during this speech.
The teacher then opened up the forum to the parents, and i waited for what i thought would be typical parent worries /concerns.
"How much time do you spend doing individual reading with the children?"
"Will they start to learn basic Math?"
"Will they practice Handwriting skills?"

However not one of these questions came up.
I was instead subjected to the following babble.
"What do we bring in for Birthday Parties?"
"Who gets picked to help out at Easter Party?"
"Can I sign up to be a  Xmas Party Helper now?"
It felt like all the intelligence was slowly being sucked out from the room.
There were even more dumber questions asked, however they were so dumb my brain failed to retain them as a piece of knowledge and they were discarded from thought  like an episode of two and a half men.
I then muttered under my breath to my wife
" I hope their kids are not as retarded as they are, or Lilys in big trouble."
I knew then, school was going to be an experience not just for my daughter but for me too.