A radical change to our home-life.
That I am so ready for. This is a tale of motherhood, love, connection, neurodivergence and prioritising the individual child over the system.
I want to revisit a period of my life, six years ago, when things looked quite different.
It’s September 2018 and my daughter has just started preschool.
She’s going in 9am-3pm, Monday-Friday, and it dawns on me that she is basically starting school.
I feel quite emotional about this. After dropping her off on the first morning, I cry.
But I also know that my sociable, extroverted daughter is going to relish this environment.
And she does.
It’s my own ‘letting go’ that I’m contending with rather than her attachment to me.
The knowledge that the free-flowing time we’ve had together since her birth has come to an end.
However, my attention shifts now to my nearly two-year-old son.
This tender, sweet, gentle boy with white-blond hair who likes to curl himself into my body for long cuddles.
Like me, he enjoys quiet time.
He’s not speaking much and I put this down to being second-born with a very outgoing older sister who adores him, and often speaks for him.
Each morning, we drop my daughter at nursery and walk up the road to a Spanish coffee shop for a shit coffee and a hot croissant, fresh out the oven.
He has a babyccino and the foam often ends up on the tip of his nose, or creating a snowy moustache.
We sit mostly in silence, smiling at each other occasionally.
I love this time with my son.
I also have to work and so I soon start sending him to the same nursery his sister went to - and loved - two days a week.
He hates it.