Parental Doubt

All it takes is one comment for the parental self doubt to creep in. Whether it’s someone randomly telling a new mother she’s holding her baby the wrong way (yep I’ve had that – but really, if he was uncomfortable he would let me know me so shut up!) to the latest:

Master Six comes home and casually mentions: “Mum, when I was walking to school this morning a mother told me to tell my mum I was too young to be crossing the road by myself.”

This time though, the self doubt only lasted about half a minute - Maybe I was a bit premature in letting him walk alone to school… but then we had walked the same route numerous times as a family and taught him to look three different ways before crossing the one and only street.

I had to ask: “You didn’t do anything dangerous when you crossed the street did you?”

“No, I stopped and waited till there were no cars like you taught me.” I can tell when he’s lying and he wasn’t.

No, this mother was just a busy-body who hadn’t yet cut the umbilical chords connecting her own children, I decided, and began to feel my hackles rising.

But even so, I walked the same route the next day with Master Six and made sure I had a good description of the “orange-hair, white-shirt, green-car, that wasn’t a van but had a sliding door” - driving mother who had given my son this indirect ticking off to his mum.

“Is that her?” I asked all the way to school, rolling up my sleeves.

Ok, that last part was a lie. I’m hardly the type to start a fisticuffs outside the school gates, let alone even confront her, but, for some reason, I still wanted to know who this Martha Stewart was.

We didn’t see her but I still met a lot of other lovely non-judgmental mothers that morning and had a good chin wag instead. It turned out Master Six is quite popular at school and, no sooner had we entered the school gates than a team of children came running up and, after calling out good morning rituals, began chasing his younger brother and sister round the yard like they were a couple of Pied Pipers.

Note to self: remember to dress them in running shoes next time.

But back to the orange-haired, white-shirt mother driving a green car with a sliding door that’s not quite a van – aka a people mover. When prompted further that night Master Six ventured: “Well, she said I looked scared and I didn’t say anything but I thought in my head ‘I’m not scared’.”

No, he’s an intelligent, well-trained six-year-old who’s been taught how to cross a street so maybe it’s time someone dealt with their own apron strings before passing judgement.

Jump Jam

Master (toothless) Six came home one night last week and gave me a demo of some hip-hop dancing they’d been learning at school.

“Oh I know that song,” I said jumping up and copying his moves to Funky Town.

“No, that’s not how it goes,” he said before re-performing the routine whilst innocently singing “Won’t you take me to f*cken town.”

Oh dear, I wonder how many other kids got that one wrong.

The dance routine, it turned out, was for their Jumpjamathon school fundraiser on Wednesday. It was a combination of Master Six never disclosing anything about his day and me not reading the school newsletter properly which lead me to believe it was a skipping jumpathon like last year’s fundraiser.

“But how are you going to perform a dance with your skipping ropes?” I asked visualising a tangle of limbs tripping over each other and their ropes.

He didn’t bother answering me, which isn’t anything out of the ordinary so I went on believing it was a combination of skipping and a jumbled up dance routine and sponsored him nonetheless.

I also inadvertently found out the day before it was a dress up day. “Oh yes, he’s coming as Spider Man,” the teacher informed me.

I could only blame myself for my ignorance - I’d had a hectic week and, after I dug out the newsletter, there it all was in black and white. But anyway, it seemed Master Six had it all under control.

The event coincided with bookweek and the kids were to parade their storybook character costumes before taking part in the Jumpjamathon later that morning followed by a sausage sizzle.

Wednesday is my day off, sans kids, and I fill it to the brim but I felt a twinge of guilt at my distraction from this special day and, besides, watching dancing was a whole lot more fun than watching kids trip over their skipping ropes. I dropped my plans and turned the car round and headed back out to the school. Arriving at the gates, my nana – Master Six’s great-grandmother drove past so I flagged her down and she joined me for this impromptu morning of entertainment.

We were glad we went. It was high-excitement inside the school grounds. Snow Whites, fairies, pirates, Pippi longstockings, Karate Kids, Little Red Riding Hoods and copious Spider Man’s buzzed around. Finally one emerged from the crowd with thinly-disguised delight at seeing us.

The Jumpjamathon began and all the story characters came to life as an array of colour moved as one … well sort of … some were more co-ordinated than others.

Jumpjam is like aerobics (Jim), but not as we know it. Each class took turns at leading the school through a routine to songs such as Stop Drop and Roll, Blame it on the Boogie and, of course, Funky Town.
”Bet this isn’t the type of music you and Poppa danced to back in the day,” I leaned over and said to nana as Who Let the Dogs Out blared out over the masses.

“No, it certainly wasn’t,” she laughed.

Master Six is a sly one. As he doesn’t share anything I was equally unaware of just how good a dancer he is. Watching the effort and joy the dancing brought and with his rugby career days looking like they’re numbered, much to his dad’s dismay, I renewed my vow to enrol him in hip-hop classes.

As for the Funky Town number, try as I did to watch their mouths, it proved impossible to lip-read what they were singing but I did notice some, perhaps bewildered, kids omitting that “F” word completely.

Back to School

The Facebook pages were breathing a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday.

Almost every second comment on my Homepage read something like: “Yay, kids back at school. Phew, I made it!”

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

On the one hand, the job I have held down for the past six weeks as a referee is over. The fighting had become unbearable and my empty threats, along with the naughty corner, had long worn thin. Finally in the last week of holidays, after mum suggested I take something away they love, I cottoned on to a new form of punishment. Äs a result, teddy, rabbit and baby – their respective favourite cuddly toys – spent long hours sitting in their own “naughty corner”, on top of the highest cupboard in the kitchen.

This proved excruciating for they could see them but not have them.

Then one day Cadeyn decided Jai’s second favouite cuddly toy, lion, should join his own naughty teddy up on the shelf. Unable to reach, he threw him up in the air where lion disappeared over the top shelf and down the back of the gigantic fridge never to be seen again.

Cade’s teddy did an all-nighter on the shelf for that one.

So while I’m pleased that three bored kids are back into their kindy and schooling routines, I’m less than enthused about the pressure of deadlines.

This is made harder by the fact we are still living in limbo. Not knowing when the property we are looking after will sell, we kept the kids attending school on the other side of town intending to return there. So all this tripping across town makes for tight schedules, though we are constantly running late.

It’s very important to Cade that we get to school on time and, if I let it slip that we are running late, I cop a tirade of verbal abuse all the way there. He was particularly nervous this week so I made sure I got up extra early and even forewent my morning run to get it right.

But I stuffed up by not ordering his stationery on time. I don’t know what I was expecting when I parked outside the shop and ran in several weeks ago. But, having left the kids in the car, I obviously wasn’t expecting to be handed a list of 15 items such as “Clever Kiwi My Writing Book 2 Year 4 Plus, and 3F1 Limp Cover, Ruled 12mm, 32 Leaf Notebook”

Looking up from my list to the large shop spilling with random stationery I had no idea where to start. It was a hot day and I could already hear the kids fighting in the car so I left with the list, sans stationery, and ordered it instead online some time later.

By Wednesday it still hadn’t arrived and someone was not happy.

“But what will I write on?” he whimpered all the way to school. “Will all the other kids have their stationery? I don’t want to be the only one with no books!”

After dropping him off, I went home and found the stationery waiting on the door step.

This was when I checked my emails with some leading onto Facebook. In amongst the communal elation were photos of first dayers swimming in their new oversize school uniforms, accompanied by comments from weepy mums stating how fast their babies had grown. Some children had been clingy, others (like mine) had been happy to see their parents go. All the first-time mothers (and some fathers), I noticed at drop off, had been wearing sun glasses.

I suppose I should say something nostalgic here about how I will miss the kids but, while the holidays were fun, I won’t miss playing referee, they enjoy school and kindy and return home full of their news and actually happy to see each other. So early morning rush and verbal abuse aside, it’s more pleasant all-round.

Yes, I think I just caught myself breathing that mutual sigh of relief.

Show

Last week I had the privilege of attending a spectacular show at Event 33 centre. It was Onerahi Primary’s production of The Magic Box and it wasn’t until halfway that I realised I was sitting on the edge of my seat with my mouth hanging open and a wet face from laughing so hard. What a talented bunch of kids.

I’m not sure if it’s still the largest primary school in Northland as it was when I attended in the 80s but allowing each pupil to perform meant for a lengthy show. Even my hubby, who is more the sporty kind than theatrical had to admit he enjoyed it and, sidelong glances throughout the show spotted a smile on his face the entire time.

Our little man’s class was first up as a group of cute buzzy bees performing a dance competition and he delivered his line without any signs of stage fright despite the 600 spectators.

Directed and part-written by teacher Alan Curry, classes created and performed their own items, centered around a treasure chest discovered in the attic of one of the main characters. The boy and his friends opened it to discover a variety of artifacts which sprang to life in each scene depicting characters and trends from throughout the eras. Although these children weren’t around back in the day, they head-banged to Nirvana and hip-hopped to Vanilla Ice and even carried out a live version of the old popular Pacman game with aplomb.

As well as laughter, my tears were from pride. Pride in the Onerahi community and pride in all the kids – some of whom I’ve watched grow from babies.

These kids were thriving up there and I hoped like anything their parents were there watching. Unfortunately disappointed parents missed out on tickets but I also knew of one family right then who weren’t there supporting their kids because they just plain couldn’t be bothered. I watched their daughter up there on the stage, her face lit up, putting her heart and soul into her performance and wondered who she was performing to. I felt pride for her and told her so the next day.

And looking at these fit, lean children in all their purity, I couldn’t help but wonder what will become of them. If only you could bottle up their enthusiasm, innocence and willing to please.

The Facebook pages were full of talk of the show and there were many tired kids away the next day – but not our little man. He’s in love with school, not to mention his teacher and was straight back up the hill as soon as gates opened.

Oh and the highlight for me besides the buzzy bees? The little break dancer who stole the show.

As we emerged back into the light I announced that I would be enrolling Cade in hip-hop classes until I stole a look at his father’s face. His look of horror said what he thought about that.