My daughter all of 19 months had just started Playschool. The first day she went unsuspecting and happy another outing with her mother or so she thought. When I went to fetch her an hour later she was crying but then so were ALL of the children. Something of a chain reaction the teacher said.
The second day she saw the gate of the school and started crying. The third day she saw the lane of the school and started crying. I placed her bag and water bottle at the basket and she would just keep picking it up and giving it to me. Telling me in her own language, “Let us go.”
Mothers have to do what they have to do. Some of the other mothers stood outside the school for the duration the child was in. That itself was quite a group so you actually had all the mothers getting to know each other. That group would probably stay till their babies settle in and they too settle in.
Day four and five were pretty much the same, we cry when we realize we are going to school and we cry when we see our mothers come to fetch us. On day six, four students were actually segregated as they were the only ones who would not stop crying. My daughter was thankfully not one of them yet to all practical purposes as a parent I dropped her with what had become a pattern. We cry when we are dropped and picked up. The teacher however reassures all parents that the worst of the cranky lot also settle in a fortnight.
Thanks to the Mumbai rains the mothers had finally started going home or at least running for their errands and leaving that precious school gate. Once you do it then that habit of clinging to the gate while your baby is inside goes.
Finally my baby stopped crying on the 9-10th day so much so that I asked her teacher, ” Why is she not crying.” She replied, ” They cry you worry why are they crying, they do not cry you ask why she is not crying.”
It’s almost a month since she started her playschool and Risha now finally enjoys her sessions. The junk food that goes in her tiffin box adds to her joy, the biscuits, the cheeselings, the sponge cake, the pasta, all yummy yummy delights. She now wants to check out what she is getting for her snack time before we pack her tiffin. Once she walks in to class she goes to her fish tank or goes towards the toys. There are 30 students in her class which is great as she comes from an only child house. She loves all that to I think. What does go on in her mind what does she really think I can only imagine and piece things together. She yet speaks one word at a time. Waiting for her to start speaking sentences and expressing herself in the language we adults understand. Till then it is this mind and eye language that mama and baby must play.
