Scarlett was so full of her two days at school when she came yesterday. A few of her friends from nursery are starting with her so it has made her more confident. Typically of Scarlett she has entered into it all with such enthusiasm. "Hands up!" has become her favourite expression "Hand's up who wants tomatoes at lunch, hand's up who want's to go for a walk!" I had to join in of course and even Cassie was expected to hold up her paw before we went for a walk! Eldest daughter is so beautifully organised and has written out a date list of every day I will have to pick her up from school right through to next March, when her partner is being transferred to a new job so his shift patterns will change. I'm going to have a few dummy runs during the school holidays to get the timing just right. It has taken me back to when my children started school and even when I started school. It all seems so much more relaxed and easy going. I keep thinking how lucky Scarlett is but I can't help but have these nagging worries in the back of my mind.
Even primary schools now have resident psychologists, I know a very nice family, who work so hard to give their children the best life yet both of the children are seeing a psychologist regularly for "low self esteem." The news loves to give us statistics all the time about how many percent of children now have mental health problems and how much up that is from previous years. If it all seems so much more happy and relaxed than in my days of starting school why has this happened? I was terribly shy at school, maybe today I would have been sent to a psychologist for having "low self esteem". Has the modern world really changed children so much or is it just experts are so quick to put labels on people now.
I have lots of old school photos in my collection, the top two are the 1950s to the two photos at the bottom from around 1910.
