Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 October 2004 20:49:07
Hmmm
Well, I suppose it's a good job I decided to celebrate my birthday on the Saturday, that's all I can say.
Monday - the day itself? Well, I have to admit to a sneaking sense of hurt that not one member of staff had even got me a card, although they enjoyed the cakes I took in. This school certainly isn't like my old one - I prefer working here, but the staff relationships are strictly professional (and not always that!) and the friendships there only extend so far and no further. Ho hum - I decided not to do much work and took the children down to the computer room to play maths games :)
Picking up Smudgelet from school, his teacher comes out to speak to me. He's been refusing to eat school dinners. Now this is where I feel very hypocritical. I used to go home for dinner because I hated school dinners so much and it made my life quite miserable to have to eat them. But that was primarily because our school had the policy that you had to have a bit of everything on your plate and eat it, whether you liked it or not. At his school he has a choice, and most of the things on the menu are things he likes really. He's had school dinners at the same school for three years and never complained before, and the menu is really varied and good. But the fact of the matter is, I don't have time to make sandwiches or to cook him a proper meal at night, so he has no option - school dinners it is. Boy, I feel mean! He was very upset and, as is his wont, decided that he is the world's most hard-done-by little boy.
Then, to add insult to injury, he suffered another major rejection by me, his cruel and uncaring mother. Two visitors dropped round for half an hour and a cup of coffee to find out about my birthday party and to bring me a present. When he kept talking over them and trying to take my attention away from them and onto him, I suggested (rather forcefully) that he either sit quietly, go and play in his room, or bring something quiet from his room to play alongside where we were chatting. Such rejection - the child was inconsolable (hmm.. do I sense another ploy to attract attention?)
Tiddles arrived home from school declaring that he intended to go to Scouts after all, despite being clearly too tired for it. Of course, I hadn't realised that he'd get the bumps if he went this week - of course he had to go. I wasn't in the mood for an argument, but told him it was on his own head if he went and then had problems due to overtiredness during the week. Mr Stubborn, however, was unperturbed - uniform went on defiantly, and he went and stood by the car for me to take him. BAD MOVE!
After Scouts I pick him up and tackle him about the little matter I have come across in his diary. He has scrawled abuse about one of his teachers across the page. Under normal circumstances I'd have postponed talking to him about it until the following day, but the following day was his birthday. So the matter has to be dealt with and got out of the way. I approach it along the lines that I know it was him who has written it and I'd like to know the circumstances. He explodes. Mega-tantrum - rude and defiant and adamant that he is being wrongly accused. The first tantrum in months. :( I end up in tears, throwing his birthday presents, unwrapped and with the price still attached, into the bathroom where he is ranting and raving. It has the desired effect in that he realises how much I love him. I thought he would be overwhelmed by the actual present - he's wanted a penknife for two years now and I'd said he wasn't old enough - but he was overwhelmed by the cost. Bless the lad, he was devastated - both because he'd let me down and because he'd spoiled my birthday. We had a good cry together while I calmed him down enough to sleep - although by this time it was nearly midnight.
No massage class for me tonight. I'm shattered.
It was his birthday today, so I arranged to meet him from school for a snatched lunch together. His school were not well impressed - how dare I take him out for lunch without written permission in triplicate, filed three months in advance? Like this, actually - Hi there, Tiddles, come and have some lunch with Mum.
Birthday tea and grand present opening. Is my son really twelve now? One look at his face shows he's turning from a boy to a young man - although to see him in the coat my sister bought him which is made for age 10, you'd never believe he was growing at all. This time next year, I'll be the mother of a teenager. I feel robbed of six years of his childhood, but I love the young man he's becoming. I'm so proud of them both, him and Smudgelet. But boy, do I feel forty!