An Ordinary Subversive Day

I baked bread today, something I haven't done in a long time.  I must have done it right because it staved off the hunger of two teenagers for the whole of the evening.  For once, no cries of "Mum, I'm starving!"

My husband and I were both terribly law-abiding people when we set out.  We thought we would raise the sort of kids that teachers would love to teach: we would be welcomed with open arms at parents' evenings.  But if parenting teaches you anything, it teaches you that you can't make any assumptions at all about your future or that of your kids.  To my abiding astonishment, I have turned into one of those parents from whom teachers run and hide.  My children have become renowned at school, not for their academic prowess, but for the chaos they leave in their wake.

Nothing about my family has turned out to run smoothly.  What started out as a mild propensity to be endearingly different when my children were very small, seems to have turned into a family committment to anarchy and subversion.  My children do not go to school every day, for example, and what is even more shocking, if you knew the sort of person I am, is that I condone and sometimes encourage it.  My daughter Julie spent so long out of classes (a year and a half) that it is as if eventually the whole edifice of school attendance collapsed around us.  When a welfare officer contacted us, I'm afraid I just laughed (Julie was in hospital at the time).  She now goes to school every day, but only because she wants to.  When she does not want to go, no welfare officer on earth would be able to drag her there.  I trust her to make her own mind up.

In fact, Julie has chosen not to go into school tomorrow because most of the day is taken up with a lengthy assessment in one of her subjects and she decided that it was too early in recovery for her to handle the additional stress.  After all we have lived through in the last year, I am completely behind her decision: it is a huge improvement for Julie to be able to recognize the stress that the looming assessment was causing and walk away from it.  She decided she would stay away from school altogether tomorrow, because while there she might encounter some gentle (and not so gentle) pressure to take the assessment anyway.

Her brother does not get to make the decision about going to school all by himself, but I am not as strict now with him as I used to be. It seems pointless sending him in just to make him miserable, so sometimes I won't probe too deeply about a sore throat that starts up suspiciously first thing in the morning, or a tummy-ache that seems a bit vague.  He has battles enough to fight, and I sometimes think he needs to have some slack.  Life is tough at that age, and he has had a rough ride this year with the chaos surrounding Julie's admission to hospital.  He was at home with me today, and to be perfectly honest I no longer worry about him missing an occasional day.  Because he is younger than Julie, I do set rules, just to draw a line: he doesn't get to watch TV or play computer games.  In fact I made him read "Lord of the Flies", which is perhaps why he has not suggested staying at home again tomorrow!