School rules

A new chapter in our lives begins

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I had a dream recently that I hadn’t bought the right school uniform for Dexter, and was rummaging frantically through the cupboards while he stood there in his pants. There was nothing I could do to help him, and I woke up bereft.

Dexter starts school this week and I’ve been putting off buying his uniform because I feel really sad about this new chapter; surprisingly sideswiped by an amorphous melancholy that’s overwhelmed a moment I’d expected to take in my stride.

It began when we had to choose schools. The list asked for six, and we only knew of two or three in our area. And anyway, we reckoned we’d be a shoo-in for the nicest one closest to us.

What I didn’t realise was that a cohort of parents at Dexter’s nursery had already started doing tours of local schools and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of after-school care facilities. And then I was introduced to the fresh hell of catchment-area calculators and started to feel quite miserable about it all.

It was the only thing anyone could talk about and it felt uncomfortably competitive, although it was only ever an illusion of choice. We did some tours, stuck four schools on the list, and put it out of our minds as best we could.

When announcement day arrived, it all kicked off.

We were in the pub and trepidatiously opened the email to see we’d been offered our second choice of school. I felt utterly deflated. Meanwhile, the WhatsApp groups pinged into action, broadcasting a litany of schadenfreude and speculation. I turned my phone off, finished my pint, and resolved to figure out how the waiting-list system worked.

“Did you get your results?” a mother asked me the following morning at nursery drop-off. Another cocked her head sympathetically. “I heard the news,” she said, before offering to send me a spreadsheet of the admissions breakdown for the school we didn’t get into.

The thing is, school number two is excellent and I’m sure Dexter will be very happy there – and if he’s not, we’ll move him. But the sadness persisted, and it’s taken a lot of hard work to trawl through the fog, talk to friends, and figure out why I feel as I do.

Our neighbour Karrie, after a big hug, described parenting as “one long break-up”, which has really resonated. Going to school is a significant milestone and it marks another step in Dexter’s growing up and moving slightly away. It’s bittersweet too – a reminder of the distance we’ve already travelled.

I’m also a little tremulous about delivering him into a world in which I have very little control. Who knows what the kids will be like and what goes on in the playground. It’s something my friend Ann has had to work through with her son, who’s a year ahead of Dexter. “It’s about peers and their influence,” she messaged me. “My son’s a changed kid since school. He’s learned to cuss. Not bad stuff, not yet, but he understands the format.”

And if we’re going to get existential here, Ian, a talented writer and father of two, wrote this to me: “Kids really make you look at time (and your mortality) differently.” Hitting a milestone like starting school has certainly impressed upon me our particular direction of travel.

The good news? Dexter can’t wait to start school. His teachers came to visit us at home and were delightful. Many of his nursery friends are going to the same school (the catchment area for our top choice shrank considerably this year, due to siblings of those already in the school taking precedence – I did actually look at the spreadsheet) and he’s particularly excited about looking after the chickens who live in a coop at the school’s entrance.

The school uniform is with us now, a pile of clothes in shades of navy waiting to be tagged with his name. Whatever happens, at least he won’t be standing around in his pants.