booked off

I have just left Snooks, standing at the window of his school room, a forlorn Dalek, mouthing “I will miss you mummy,” as I backed away towards the gate.

By the time I reached home I was tearful and nauseous. Is it supposed to be this hard?

The day began with a reluctant playdate – reluctant on my part because playdates have become fraught encounters with other boys where they pummel, bite and punch Snooks as he pushes, torments and teases them. Either way, it is exhausting. Snooks had been off school for two days which meant hanging out with me, shopping, a bit of football in the garden, a few rows. He loves it more than anything – more than school, more than friends, more than ice cream, more than everything else. So a playdate did not compare. We went anyway and half the time they played and half the time I refereed.

Then came school and World Book Day which I had hoped would be a bright spot but instead brought about the nauseous tearful drive home which almost finished me off.
Snooks did not want to go. He was “too sick”. He lay on the floor. He did not want to wear his Dalek costume. He did not want me to come and then leave. He never wanted to go to school again. He never wanted to leave me again.

The school he attends had said that the children could dress as a character from a book and bring mums in for half an hour at the start to read with them. It sounded good in theory. But like Snooks I could see the pitfalls. What if the costume was rubbish? And how could he let me go once I was in the building?

I persuaded him with the help of a chocolate coin and the plan that we would carry the costume in a bag until we got there and saw what was what.
So far so good. Once inside the gates having spotted Snow White, Dorothy and Buzz Lightyear (???) he agreed to put on the main bit which has fabulous silver circles and two antennae for firing Dalek-style lasers which are velcroed to the front. The hat was out of the question, understandably. By the way in case you are wondering, a character in Dogger dresses as a Dalek. Snooks had done a double whammy on the dress up idea. He wanted to dress up as a character who dresses up.

Once inside the classroom I got a glimpse of my daily dread – Snooks quiet and circumspect, unsure how to join in with his friends and frozen in terror when the big loud boy made fun of his antennae. Snooks ripped them off and shoved them into my bag when no one was looking.

“Just ignore him,” I whispered as we sat down to read. “What is he dressed as anyway? I can’t even tell,” I said trying waspish camp as a defence, which half worked.

As I read to him along with the other mothers and their children, he curled his little frame into me and rested his head on my arm. I looked around. The other children looked so much older, so much easier with this set up. They wandered around talking to each other, they sat in groups, they half listened as their mothers read and then skipped off to play.

Other mums started to get their coats and the children milled around the toys. The teacher indicated silently to me that it was time to go. Summoning up the best breezy cheer I can do I started to move.

“Bye mum,” Snooks announced, getting up and walking slowly away without looking back. I thought I had it cracked. Perhaps he was happy here after all. Once I go he will join in with the fracas, I told myself.

And then I saw him standing at that window.

truth will out

Snooks was in a bit of trouble yesterday. When I arrived to pick him up from school, I overheard the teacher telling another boy that pushing was not allowed and he should say sorry.

“But Snooks O’Hara started it,” he yelped. Oh dear.

When I stepped up for my turn the teacher smiled and winced as she handed Snooks over to me, clearly struggling with where to start.

She started with telling me that Snooks had hurt his bottom. He had hurt his bottom falling backwards. He had fallen backwards having been pushed by the boy I had just overheard. They had given him an ice pack for his bottom as he was upset (I was surprised by this bit of news – the rest I could have predicted – as Snooks rarely cries about physical injuries so either it had really hurt or he rumbled how to get sympathy when in a tight spot). The story they had been told, she emphasised, was that Snooks had started it.

Snooks, who had run to me happy and excited seconds earlier, transformed visibly into his sullen, young offender other self.

Dragging me away from the milling mums to behind the bins, he turned tearful.

“Just tell me what happened. I promise not to be cross,” I said.

“Never,” he replied, his mot du jour.

Things were going so well. It was day two of back to school and both days he had bounded in, keen to see the other children, excited at last to have someone under 40 to play with.

What could I do? I could not let it go. He would not speak in his own defence so I had no option but to accept the official line, although the backwards delivery of the facts by the teacher had definitely cast reasonable doubt in my mind on the testimony.

I stroked his bottom gently and acted stern. Pushing is not allowed, whoever starts it, I said. And by the way, if someone else ever does push you, you don’t push back. You go and tell the teacher.

In the past, misbehaviour at school reported by the teacher has earned a punishment – removal of a favourite toy for a set time. Snooks, I am sure, had not forgotten this, though mercifully it was quite a long time ago. But now I was not so sure. A number of people have told me to keep school and home misdemeanours separate. Dragging school convictions all the way home for sentencing seems a little long-winded for a three year old who barely remembers he has been to school by the time we get home. Plus, there was that reasonable doubt.

So instead I laid it on a bit thick about how to stay out of trouble by steering clear of anyone being naughty, and not retaliating.

“Also,” I added today, as Snooks stood next to me on his kitchen step, chopping mushrooms for tonight’s Hidden Vegetable Bolognese Sauce (will he put two and two together?), “it is very important to tell the truth. If someone is naughty to you, you should tell the teacher and they will deal with that person.”

“So it’s like the police chasing baddies?” he said, fresh from his Christmas viewing of Cars 2, which has opened up his world to the existence of “baddies” and “goodies” and life’s struggles between them.

“Mmm, a bit,” I said, half listening while letting him grate a carrot and my finger into the bubbling sauce.

“And do the goodies always win?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, more focussed now, spotting an important parenting moment hove into view as I sucked a finger and stirred. ‘Yes they do. The truth will always out, Snooks. Even if it takes a little while.”

“And so what if the policeman is not very good and does not catch any of the baddies?” he asked.

There have been times over the last three years when I have been convinced Snooks is invested with some kind of superpower which makes him both three and going on 53 at the same time. He has, a few times now, seemed to know or understand things that he could not possibly have been told by anyone. Usually I forget about them before I have time to write them down but this one had managed to lodge in my mind all morning. And so here it is.

His question comes the day after two men were sentenced for the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager stabbed to death in 1993 by a gang as he waited at a bus stop in south east London.

The facts are well known now across the world. The parents of the murdered boy had to fight a long hard battle for justice for their son because the police failed to investigate the crime properly at the time, and vital evidence was lost. The murderers got away with it. The Metropolitan Police were accused of institutional racism, which had allowed the crime to go unsolved. As a news reporter on the local newspaper, which covered the area at the time, I can wholly vouch for that accusation. I and a friend, who worked on the paper at the time, sent each other the same message yesterday as the two life sentences were handed out. “At last.”

“Most policemen do their best, and most people are good and eventually the goodies always win,” I told him.

“And when someone has been naughty, they can decide to stop doing that and be good, can’t they?” he asked.

Ok scrap the concert pianist, professional footballer, astrophysicist, poet laureate plans. He’s off to law school, if we can just keep him out of trouble long enough to get him there.

new era

I left off with the last post about the time we started to look for a new house, a move which has taken until now, almost two years, to fully accomplish.

Today a letter arrived which finally made legal the work we did on the house when we moved in over a year ago. The letter caused the Engineer to hurrah with relief on the phone.

My hurrah happened earlier today when I dropped Mr Snooks off at the preschool where he started four weeks ago and for the first time I did not have to cajole, con or coerce him into going through the door without me.

It has been a long hard road but I think - dare I say this? - we may have turned a corner.

For the Engineer and I it has been a hassle, a bit stressful, rather tiring, a lot of boring letters and some inconvenience when the builders were here.

But for Snooks, his world has changed overnight, twice.

First came the house move, which he appeared to take in his (two year old) stride until about the time the removal vans left.

Then began the daily and more importantly nightly discussions about the whereabouts of our old home, the neighbours whom Snooks had come to know, the Wedgewood blue walls in his old bedroom and even, god help us, the Green Man.

Not his new big boy bed, nor the lovely bright bedroom with the wide open sky view, nor the garden with space to scoot and play football…not even the novelty stable door in the kitchen were a match for our old cramped place.

By night he was visited by a new terror - the Racing Man – and by day he missed his old friend who no longer lived walking distance away. A few times he reproachfully announced that he was going back to live in his old house.

As the money flooded out, the rain poured in where two Polish builders worked flat out to replace the dingy bathroom and build a dining room with a vista of the 100ft garden for which we had bought the property.

But Snooks was not convinced. The snowman we made together in the garden terrified him peering under my Dad’s hat through the new patio doors from the darkness outside.

Even real fireplace access for Father Christmas, which ticked all my boxes for the M&S style festive family scene, was just another source of angst and had to be barricaded up with a giant Mickey Mouse for safety.

By his third birthday in March, as the bulbs a friend had bought as a house-warming present started to shoot, and his big sister had come to stay in the Racing Man’s room, Snooks started to see some potential in the place and requested his party be held there.

And by summer when the garden filled with roses, scarlet geraniums and lavender; when he was allowed to ‘lawn the lawn’ with Daddy and paint the fence with water; when he could sit at breakfast and observe the squirrels, cats, birds, frog, heron and fox who all visit our garden he announced he liked it here.

And then school started.

When he was born, I said I would stay at home with him for as long as was needed. I wanted him to spend his early years with his mother. I could see no point in buying a fabulous Ferrari and paying someone else to drive it, apart from any benefit he might accrue from the deal.

I did not attend nursery. Nor did anyone I know. My oldest brother did not start school full time until he was six – not because Lancashire in the 1960s was ahead of its time and had adopted the Scandinavian compulsory school age of seven, but because my mother said he was not ready.

When Snooks was six months old, I secured a place for him at a local private nursery as an insurance policy in case I became so unhinged by motherhood (which a friend had described to me as ‘solitary confinement with hard labour’) that I was no longer the best person to care for him. But that day never arrived.

So here we are. At three-and-a-half, he is expected by society to know his please and thank yous, to leave the table only with permission, to wipe his own nose and bum, to tidy up after himself, to play with his peers but not touch them uninvited and to eat, sleep and talk when told to.

And to leave his mum’s arms for the limited attention of three unknown adults and the company of 25 little strangers also wanting that attention, without a fight.

It could make you weep, couldn’t it? And believe me, it has.