But I Smile Anyway…

I don’t want to let go, I seriously can’t even consider it at the moment!

I mean, let go of my babies, and allow them to grow up!

This year Lil Man is in year 5 – aged between 9 and 10. We got letters about an after school club, and for the first time, there was the option to allow your child to leave the school premises alone, with parental permission, to go home. Not a big deal, right? No, no, no, huge, massive, enormous deal!!

I know I’m over protective about the kids, but you know, after struggles to have them, and knowing the way of the world nowadays, I feel like I can’t contemplate it yet! He’s lucky, ( or not, depends how you look at it!) I work at the school, and I’ll always be around to pick him and Lil Princess up, and if I can’t, his grandparents are available most of the time too. Well, I will until the end of next year, then he starts ‘BIG SCHOOL’!

Lil Man is just that, little. He’s a feisty chap, with a lot of emotions too. Being of small stature, he’s a possible target for being picked on, but he does manage to avert things by being the clown. He does have great friends who he sticks around with at school. If things happen, he’s still young enough to tell us, but it takes a while. But he’s also someone who is ready to defend himself too. These things worry me… What if he doesn’t have these same friends at his new school, to be a support network? What if he gets picked on by some bigger kids, walking to/from school? What if this happens and he gets in a fight?

I know, he can’t be wrapped up in cotton wool for ever, but I just can’t do it!
Ok, so I’ve got to the stage where in the mornings, I leave him in the playground so I can get set for work, and when he has his karate lessons, sometimes I don’t stay, but that’s about it! But then he gets a bit anxious when he knows I’m not around as well.

One of his previous teachers was worried about him having dyspraxia tendencies at one time… That wasn’t proved, but there is something there. I’m not sure what. Ok, so they say we’re all on ‘the spectrum’ somewhere, and I do think maybe there’s an element of truth about him too. He still has such an innocence about him, more so than a lot of his classmates. The innocence 9 year olds in my day all had. Nowadays kids are so advanced, and know so much… It all this technology they have access to that feeds their minds, giving them chances to see/read things they wouldn’t have had a chance to a few years back.

And this technology, and social media is probably a silent feeder for me and my anxieties too. You can’t turn a page in a newspaper, log into Facebook, or see the Internet home pages without reading something negative, about kidnappings, stabbings, murder, bullying, rape…

I’m pretty sure these things happened all those years ago, well we all know they did, look at the celebrity scandals that are being uncovered all the time from years gone by, and stories that are reported on nowadays. But the thing is, we weren’t aware of them constantly. Something hugely major would be in the national papers or on the news on TV, not everything. Now, you hear something, and within seconds, someone has written and posted about it, right or wrong, and the rumour mill starts up… Or the anxieties of parents like me are pumped up.

So excuse me if I don’t want to let go too soon. Things are scary out there. He’s a precious lil boy and I want to give him the right life skills, but I don’t know when to start! And as for Lil Princess… Well she’s 6 going on 16 and wants to do everything her big brother gets to do right now! I don’t think these things would bother her too much, her confidence is pretty solid.

Unlike her brother. If he was playing his drum, you could stand him up, in front of a thousand, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid! But the idea of going to big school alone with none of his mates, that scares the hell out of him. He does talk about walking to and from school alone, when that time will come, and though he is quite excited about it, there is a little nervous glint in his eyes as he talks about it. And it makes my heart ache…

So,like I said, I don’t want to let go…

He’s not old enough yet!

But when is the right time???