How was your first day at school?

Candie wrote: »

I don't know. I guess parents can prepare a child as best they can but it's still possible that on the day a combination of strange faces and separation and anticipation and a million other things on top of an individual childs disposition will conspire to make them anxious.

I'm sure teachers will have seen tears often enough on first days to consider it within the normal range of behaviours and reactions.

Sometimes you can do everything right and things still don't work out, especially when it comes down to how an individual feels on a particular day on top of all the other variables. I think most parents do their best to prepare their kids, it doesn't mean they've failed them.

Yeah, I see your point, but at all other stages of a child's development, we take their panic and fear quite seriously.

I'm sure that you also have friends who recount their first day of school as a pretty scary experience.

Of course we're never going to eradicate that completely, but that's an impossible standard to meet, anyway. Nevertheless, we can probably do better. It shouldn't be so commonplace for a child to dread her education.

I think the fact that I was allowed to wear that poodle mask gave me a feeling of security in that I could observe the facial language if others without giving anything away myself. I was integrating st my own pace and the school was fine with that. I think a few others wore masks too, and of course we took them off as soon as we felt comfortable.

As a very young only child I had been brought to interesting environments which greatly stimulated my imagination. One place was the control tower of Dublin Airport in the very early 60s where my parents’ Friend, Tom Donovsn, was chief controller. I was shown the planes on the radar and watching them coming in. I had all the aircraft names off, Viscounts, Super Constellations, Fokkers etc. my father showed me how wings produce lift by holding a spoon in the tap stream. I ended up learning to fly myself as soon as I started earning.

My mother had taught me to read, had made me a teddy bear that got pregnant with a miniature best. She taught me all the colours, how to mix them to make any colour I wanted. My father had a big map of the world in his home office, as he worked as Irish agent for British engineering firms. He would get me to names all the countries on the map and pointed through the wall in the direction of America. From an early age I was well orientated in the physical world and used to imagine myself walking or swimming to various foreign countries.

I was really well prepared for school, and eager for a bit of “independence” from my parents. I adored strangers, especially tricking them. One of my specialities was to amuse myself during my mother’s visits to wholesalers in town to supply her home hat making business-I would go to the other end of the shop, or another floor, and pretend I was a “foreign” lost kid, and start speaking to people in my own made-up gibberish language. People were always trying to work out what country I came from. At one time I approached a shop assistant (speaking English) and told her I was lost. I absolutely loved the consternation I had caused and hearing my name called out on tannoy. Then when my mother came over to claim me I declared “that’s not my mammy, I don’t know her, I’m not going with her”. The awkwardness of it all amused me thoroughly, and sure my mother knew right well I was a chip off her own mischievous block!