Back-to-school week
The last drops of sun cream have trickled from the bottle and the record-breaking summer sizzle is over. Nothing marks the end of summer more patently than the arrival of back-to-school week.
Some children are battle-hardened veterans, sharpening their pencils ready to venture once more unto the breach. Others, however, have had their final days of summer darkened by clouds of doubt and anxiety. Going to school for the first time can be a terrifying prospect as it is a watershed moment of transition and change. Children will find themselves stripped of the comforts of home and then submerged into a whirlpool of complex relationships. Below you can find some useful tips to alleviate some of the new-school ailments this week brings.
Many children are concerned that their teacher will be a malignant tyrant. More often than not, tutors aren’t fictitious fire breathing dragons, but rather, understanding and inspiring role models. One teacher this year sent out a bag of “jitter glitter” to calm the first day nerves of her incoming students.
Welcome ceremonies offer parents the chance to mingle with the people who will be moulding the minds of their children, and perhaps settle some nerves of their own. Parents attending a back-to-school ceremony in China, however, were aghast when a pole dancer began to perform in front of their 3 to 6-year old children. Perhaps it was just an unavailing metaphor, an attempt to say that a person can remain fun and flexible around the rigidity of discipline? If it was, it was certainly lost on the unamused parents, who demanded their tuition fees be refunded.
If your friends have children who started at school this week, then undoubtedly you have seen it well documented on social media. For some parents in Stockton-on-Tees, there was a risk they would never get to share their parental pride with the world, as they queued for hours to pick up their children’s school uniform. Some even left the store empty handed, forced to begin plotting how they would fashion the kitchen curtains into some sort of philosopher-esque robe.
If you weren’t worried about your child’s first day of school yet, you will be after this — children suffer colds six to eight times a year, and are at an increased risk of the flu. While there isn’t much you can do to prevent a fellow parent dropping patient zero off at the school gates, there are few tips below which can help keep your child from falling ill — just remember to ask questions if they start sniffling the night before their homework is due.
The week has seen a uniform famine, anxiety, sickness, jitter glitter and pole dancers (the last two are not related). It is an exhilarating time for both children and parents, so bury the worries into the deep recess of your mind and look forward to all the exciting times ahead.
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