Of Schools and Independence

I took leave these few days to get Laetitia started with her playschool. I really must be proud of her because for the first 2 days, she did not cry when we drop her off at the school gate. Today, she cried a little, but not because she had chickened out; she cried because she refused to remove her shoes.

Laetitia is also brave enough to take the school bus back, on her own, from the second day of school. I guess she has inherited my "independent gene". I remembered my own first day of school, unlike Laetitia, I only went to school when I was 5, my mom sent me to the school gate and told me she would not be picking me after school, but I was to follow an "auntie" who was our neighbor to come back home on my own and then she left. I looked outside the school's window and there were many parents hovering outside the school, waiting for their children, but my mom, she went home, just like she said it.

I didn't cry. I looked to my sides, the children were howling for their parents, I was like, "Shut up already, yours are just outside, you know where is mine? She is at home. AT HOME! OK!" But I didn't say it out loud verbally; I said it with my slanted eyes stare and a stomach full of disgusts.

I am glad that Laetitia is likely to also be an independent child, but at times, I am worried. Independence without self-awareness and self-control is dangerous! Whenever I want to put a lid to her independence, she rebels like some guerrilla on the loose. And when I need her to exercise that independence of hers and walk on her own, she clings onto me like a new-born!

Parenting.... there is no harder job in the world than this. Still, I am loving it!