It’s a few weeks weeks into the school term and I’m attending my third school meeting, when the principal says something that strikes a chord: the beginning of the year doesn’t only mean back to school for the kids. It’s also back to school for the parents.
She’s right. It would explain my bewilderment for the past few weeks. All that getting up at stupid o’clock every morning, rushing to beat the traffic, checking and re-checking that we’ve remembered to pack everything, and coping with the late-night homework trauma.
What has made the transition from holidays a touch easier, though, are a few mom-friends who are experiencing similar back-to-school shock. Just like our kids, who Whatsapp, SMS, and phone their friends when they’re unsure about something school-related, we’re doing the same.
Everyone who has kids of school-going age should have a mom-friend or nine to support them. Here’s why:
You can trust them with your life
And by ‘your life’, I mean your kids. I’ve become a car-pooler. With three kids in three different schools, it didn’t take me long to realise that doing all the fetching and carrying on my own would turn me into a basket case.
So I joined a group of moms with girls in the same school as Kid 2. I do the lifting on some days, they do the fetching on other days. I can rest assured that on any given day, Kid 2 will be taken here or fetched there and she’ll be just fine.
They can fill in the blanks
There’s a seemingly endless stream of communication coming at me from my kids’ various schools. This year, though, a particular hell has been visited on me: I regularly receive SMSs from schools that don’t identify themselves.
“Please remember that your child should wear civvies tomorrow,” the message will inform me. Which child?? I’ll wonder. Should I just send them all in civvies to be safe? (I’m not the only one experiencing this. I met a mom of five who said that her worst is when a school sends an sms to say “your daughter…” and she thinks, which one?)
Mom-friends are indispensable here. We’ll regularly ask each other if we received the latest communication. The slightest blank stare from any of us means sharing via Whatsapp or email.
They can play hooky with you
I can’t be certain, but I think this year was my 12th parent-teacher meeting at our junior school. My husband’s response to my complaint about having to go to yet another one was, “So why don’t you miss it?”
It was a preposterous suggestion. Miss a school meeting? But on considering, I realised that the likelihood of being able to recite what the principal would say during the meeting was probably a good enough reason to miss at least part of it.
After the first half of the meeting, I was heading off sheepishly, only to be joined by several mom-friends who’d had the same thought. “I think we’ve earned it,” one said, and that was all it took for me to let go of the guilt and speed home to enjoy a glass of wine.
They remind you that you’re normal
Sometimes I feel I’m the only one fumbling, clueless and incompetent, through the school years. But then a mom-friend will tell me that she too missed the deadline for ordering textbooks, or another will admit that she dreads Saturday morning sports gatherings just as much as I do. And I’ll thank my stars that I’m just a normal mom and we’re all in this together.
If you’re also experiencing the back-to-school madness, don’t think of going it alone. Mom-friends are an essential accessory on your school journey. They have your back.
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