Zealously adhering to the school uniform policy (as I thought it was - at first anyway), I refused to allow The Kid to wear groovy socks even after we'd established that other children expressed their style this way. As requested by the school, for the safety of the children and to avoid churning up the village green, I parked some distance away. I accompanied The Kid to and from school, though she's more than capable of walking on her own and has been used to roaming miles from our home. In the early days I even urged her to do her homework, whether or not there seemed any point to it.
Unlikeliest of all, I joined the PTA. I hadn't quite intended to emerge from the first meeting as secretary, but I wasn't unwilling. I am not really a PTA sort of person, though I am grateful to them for the work they do to raise funds for extras at school.
Really, all of this is very unlike me. Bake sales do not, as my people say, float my boat. In my eyes, walking my ten year old to school across the village green and two small lanes is not a good use of my time. I believe in letting children take the consequences for their actions, as long as nobody gets hurt - and failure to complete homework isn't normally something that would interest me as a parent. Nor do I have an opinion one way or another about uniforms. So what on earth am I doing?
I don't quite know. Maybe I'm seeking a so-called "authentic" school experience for my daughter and myself, like those foreign tourists who must visit the chocolate box village, down pints, watch cricket games and have cream teas whether or not they actually like them. Possibly I'm trying to prove to the world that I haven't been keeping her at home all those years just because I was too idle to buy the uniform, walk her to school, and supervise the homework.
And I know that I'm taking far too much smug satisfaction from The Kid's school successes. She may be the only home educated child these people have ever knowingly met, and it matters to me that she should make the right impression. Ambassador for home education. Living proof that home education does not turn children into social misfits or academic failures. My mother-in-law used to dress her six children immaculately, not allowing them to play outdoors in case of getting dirty and attracting unwanted attention from neighbours. "I didn't want people to look down their noses at me for having more children than I could look after properly," she used to say. This is what I'm doing to my daughter now, trying to turn her into the perfect schoolchild in order to prove something about the merits of home education.
And I want her to feel that she's capable of handling school. If she leaves at the end of the term, I want her to feel she's turning her back on school out of choice, because she knows there's something better out there, rather than skulking back home with her tail between her legs because she couldn't "do" school. If she chooses home education, I want her to be comfortable with that choice. Maybe that's why it's important to me that she knows that she can get up every morning, put on the uniform, mix with the other kids, and do the work.
But I still return to an awkward feeling that I'm using her to prove a point, and in the process I am selling other kids short. After all, there are kids for whom school "success" is an impossibility. Not everyone was born a social butterfly. Not everyone can read well and add up by the age of ten. Not everyone is willing to obey silly rules just because it's expected of them. The fact that some kids don't thrive at school does not reflect badly on them, but on the school system. So I have a round peg who slides painlessly into the "holes" at school: what of it? It's nothing to brag about.
Fortunately my natural tendencies are asserting themselves. Under early morning interrogation about socks, I tell The Kid she can wear what the heck she likes as long as she stops bothering me about it. I've begun leaving her to make her own way across the green to school. Increasingly, I don't even ask whether she has homework, let alone urge her to get it done. Maybe I really am too idle to be a proper school parent.
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