I (almost) didn’t tear-up at my child’s first day of school | Lauren Novak

I briefly wondered if a lack of tears on my part might make me a bad mum, writes Lauren Novak.

The day has finally arrived; our family has entered its School Era.

Like tens of thousands of parents around the country, my partner and I waved a child off at the school gate for the first time this week.

Pristine uniform (the only day it will ever look like that), new shoes (which will be unrecognisable in a week), name label on the lunch box (we’ll see how long that sticks).

Our girl has been counting down her last days of childcare and was so eager to start big school, so there were no tears as we approached the front gates.

I briefly wondered if a lack of waterworks on my part might make me a bad mum, before batting away the unnecessary bout of parental guilt.

Twins Oliver and Nicola with cousins Lily and Henrstarted preschool on Tuesday. Picture: Tim Joy

Our daughter has been attending childcare since she was one, so she’s used to being passed into the care of other trusted adults (with the requisite background checks, of course).

We also chose a childcare centre which doesn’t use an app to communicate with parents.

So I never received those electronic updates in the middle of a work day telling me my kid had woken from a nap or just filled a nappy.

As a result, I’m used to long stretches of time when I have no idea what she’s doing.

It doesn’t mean I’m not wondering though.

All those first day anxieties were there; will she get lost going to the toilet? Will she run out of food? Will she make friends?

And just because there weren’t tears at drop off, doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed dry eyes at pick up. What if she scrapes her knee at recess? What if no one will play with her at lunch? What if she’s so exhausted at the end of the day that she falls in a teary heap before we even get to the car?

And then we’ve got to do it all again tomorrow. And the next day …

As a rough estimate, we’ve got about 840 loads of laundry (done thrice-weekly), 2800 pick-ups and drop-offs and 1400 lunch boxes to prepare between now and the start of high school.

Packing the lunch box was possibly the most nerve-wracking part of all this.

Would the teacher inspect it? Would the other kids judge it? Did it contain enough “brain food”?

Would it come home empty, or barely touched? (I stopped short of caring whether I cut things into artful shapes or put a cute note inside. She’s five, she can read about six words at this point.)

The spiralling cost of living means some families have little choice about what they send in lunch boxes, while some won’t send one at all.

A shout out here to charities like the Smith Family and Treasureboxes doing their best to ensure every kid gets to start the school year with all they need.

In my role at The Advertiser I report on the state’s education and child protection systems, which can make it hard to put aside thoughts of some of the truly worrying things that can happen to our youngsters. From the roughly one in five who start school developmentally behind to the one in three who are reported to child safety authorities at some point in their childhood.

There are the extreme bullying cases and a seemingly growing group refusing to go to school at all.

But I have also just spent weeks interviewing teens at the end of their schooling who restored my faith.

Year 12 graduates who achieved top scores, played sport and musical instruments, volunteered, ran their own businesses and still somehow found time to be nice to their friends and get some sleep.

It’s thinking about what my daughter will be like when she’s their age, 13 school years from now, that brings up more emotions for me than any first day jitters. Who will she be by then? What does her future hold?

I felt a surge of all that possibility on our first visit to her primary school, for a transition day. The four and five year olds – hats on, dwarfed by their backpacks – lined up behind their future teacher. As they filed out for their first taste of the classroom they looked back at us, and that’s when my eyes welled.

There goes the class of 2037.

Originally published as I (almost) didn’t tear-up at my child’s first day of school | Lauren Novak