This morning she got a letter from her school telling her who her teacher will be next year. She was thrilled with the choice because she said she 'got the teacher with the best shoes in the school'. She is super excited about school and wants to start now. 'After Christmas and a bit feels like forever' she told me.
You already know how I feel. I am dreading it. I feel sick at the thought of her in that blue checkered dress, sitting inside a classroom every. single. day. A tiny, selfish part of me thinks about what it might be like if school doesn't work out for her and she has to stay home with me on the farm. But the biggest part of me just hopes she doesn't lose her love of her farmer girl life. That she still has the time and the curiosity and the hunger for knowledge and experience in our world too.
This morning before lunch she sorted out the brooder and then welcomed 500 - one day old - chicks to our farm. She cuddled the Maremmas and helped us collect the eggs. She helped farmer Bren with the irrigation lines in the market gardens. She picked and gobbled strawberries and currants and gooseberries. And mostly she walked everywhere with me, singing as we went, but sometimes she sat on the back of the ute too.
It's no wonder I had to wake her when we drove up to her ballet class this afternoon.
I really am trying my hardest to live in the moment and enjoy this time we have together. But sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with a sad sort of feeling that times are a changing and I miss this time already.
This time is windy but terribly beautiful.
xx
It is always the fear that school will change the way they think....
ReplyDeleteno more make believe...
no more games just for the fun of it...
structure...
peer pressure...
other influences...
thou I guess we all need to go through it at some stage don't we?
she is going to take all that beauty and wonder you have provided for her on the farm, and she is going to fly. the thought of our babies forming their own circles that don't include us, is a bit heartbreaking really. but how well you've equipped her to take the world in with her heart and mind open! and she will always, always come home :) sarah
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad time for Mum when your littlest goes to school. But she will love it!. Sarah
ReplyDeleteI think she will always carry the wonder and beauty of your farm with her..it's a part of who she is...she has the best of both worlds really :)
ReplyDeleteIt's hard, but enjoy this new chapter Kate and all that it will bring :)
x
Hearing you LOUND and CLEAR Kate. Alfie doesn't start school until 2015 and every time I think about it, I get a little choked up.
ReplyDeleteBut he will still be my baby, like Pepper will always be to you.
x
It will always be an innate part of her, that time she has spent with you and Farmer Bren learning to love the world. They change (she says with a sob in her heart) but even in the midst of the fires of life their core is where they began and felt safe. Your girl will be fine...and you keep looking through that lens and capture her growing life! Take care xxx
ReplyDeleteI know these feelings exactly Kate. My girl is a preppie next year as well. I am taking her photo every day, pulling her close and concentrating on the here and now because the next thing is really hard to think about.
ReplyDeleteCarol
Have you thought of combining homeschooling and perhaps a few classes at school. Athletics, or music, or art at school, the rest at home. Or even a homeschooling co-op, they work really well! Just an idea.
ReplyDeleteWe have thought about it a lot.
DeleteBut she wants to do what her big sisters do.
And they want to go to school.
I do think we will part time school her mostly if she's willing.
She's not leaving home any time soon dear kate. She will be the same farm lovin', animal lovin' rascal for a long time yet..probably forever..even when in a long time coming..she does leave home. She will probably just bring home a string of friends who'd love to be little farmers like her!
ReplyDeletei send you a big comforting hug,
ReplyDeletexxx Alessandra
The pictures you have posted are so beautiful! I love Maremmas-such gentle and loyal friends.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine how you feel Kate-But I think you will love so much hearing all of her stories she will have to tell you, and I know your readers, in turn, will love hearing some of them too.
x
500 one day old chicks - amazing! Don't feel too sad...I see loads of grown-up daughters who have a great relationship with their mums, that looks pretty nice to me and something for you to look forward to...
ReplyDeleteBeautiful Kate, once a farm girl always a farm girl I think. But, I know exactly what you mean x
ReplyDeleteI always think children look to small to be going to school. Too small to be wearing a uniform. But being excited about it is a good thing, and I think that she will still love the farm.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful pictures of her and your Maremmas :-)
xo
It is hard but as you already know, the joy comes in watching them blossom and develop into the strong, independent girls we want them to be. You have created a base and model they all take forward and use as their template for ehatever experiences they encounter.
ReplyDeleteIt's bitter sweet isn't it? I'm so glad we have decided to keep Cohen at home again next year, rather than send him to pre-prep (aka kindy, it's different in every state, but here it is 2 days one week, 3 days the next and costs close to $4,000 for the year.) I'm much happier to have him at home for one more year before he goes to Prep. He's turning four on Tuesday. He's still so little!
ReplyDeleteHe has been playing with a neighbours boy the past few days while both Daddy's build our fence. The other little boy is in grade one and the difference in them is so amazing. Cohen still lives in a world full of imagination. Real and pretend things exist side by side for him and make him happy. It was heartbreaking to see this other little boy scoff at Cohen and tease him for making believe. Thankfully it washed over Cohen, but I do want him to have that for as long as possible.
I totally get the missing this time already thing too. I have to stop myself from thinking like that sometimes or I get too sad. I will be nursing Emerson thinking this might be our last baby, this may be the last baby I breastfeed and I will miss it. Or watching Cohen and Emerson play together and thinking one day soon they will fight and argue and I will miss this simple play. It's hard not to look at the future jealously at times, of what it will take away from us that we have at present. Each day we seem to have to re-learn how to live in the present and be grateful for what we have. xx
I will feel just the same this time next year, I'm even a little sad that kinder will take up so much time. Those little ones are precious and you portray your love so beautifully.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to your first comment. No I don't believe it is something we all have to go through - go to school I mean. In fact I think it is very unnatural but it has happened for a long while now and is ingrained in most of us. I think the peer group is a very pernicious thing. Think of it, all those semi socialised little people going to school and spending the maximum hours of their time with other children, some who will not sadly, have received very good care from their parents (I guess you could say that school should be helping these children, it rarely does though - rather it labels them as problematic and punishes them further). From now on, that will be the major influence in a child's life. If children were with their parents longer then I believe people would grow to be a lot better people than they currently do - there simply isn't enough time to teach them all the things that we as parents ought to. So they learn it (badly if at all) from teachers or thy emulate the behaviour of other infants and undo our work up until then. It can be frustrating.
ReplyDeleteThat is not to say I don't think children should be with other children but only children the same age as them? No. That's a strange concept isn't it, to divide children off from most of society. Yet people think that is what homeschoolers do. Funnily enough, there is a lot more scope for meeting more kinds of people from all ages and backgrounds when not at school. I know there are psychologists who agree with me about this (the harmfulness of the peer group influence and our over reliance on it). Although we have been taught as a society to believe the opposite. You only have to think of a child Pepper's age and all she will have learnt from her older siblings. Yet these other children will be only a very limited part of her life from now on. All children will be in the same year age-wise. Isn't that strange? Yet in real life, I mix with people of so many ages and have friends half my age and twice my age and in between. Shouldn't that be part of the school experience? I do think school is too soon for many children. Many parents and society in general see schools as a baby sitting service.
Anyway, I do understand how you feel. I loathed the idea of my daughter going to school. But she did go. We had good times and we had bad times. We even moved school because of the bad times, and how I loved that they had no uniform! (what a silly idea that a blue checked uniform makes people behave better). That was a nice school. Our real difficulties started at secondary school. After a year there, I was not prepared to see her suffer any more and she was desperate to leave and there was no alternative. The next 4 years were spent at home. Very happy days. We didn't have much structure at all and was largely self directed - skills that have been very useful to her. Daughter went to college after that and got back into the system with no difficulty. Finished uni last year and went elsewhere for more this year. I would home school a child from the beginning like a shot, but only if they wanted that too. Your little Pepper seems like the sort of child who would relish school, so I wouldn't want to deny her something she is so keen on and excited about. In the end it is about the child not us the parents, but no I didn't like handing her over one little bit. Bossy teachers (most are not very good either, we met one real treasure along the way) are not my cup of tea. They usually have the worst behaved children too. I used to revel in the holidays. It was wonderful having her back for those 4 years at home, it felt like freedom at long last.
I can't see your little girl losing her love for her life now, I think it is in her veins, you'll see! There will be less time obviously but she will still be little Pepper. In the end you have to be happy about the changes that make her happy but it isn't always easy and there might be a few tears too.
That photo of your girl and her Maremma is an absolute gem! Well done.
ReplyDeleteif Pepper's keen to go to school, she should go. you're conscious enough of her and her spirit to know if it's having any negative effect on her. I was a bit worried about our Olive starting at the local public school. She's such a wild, imaginative, dreamy little thing. But you know what? Instead of the classroom and peers and teachers crushing her spirit, she has shared her wildness and creativity with her peers and teachers, and they love her for it.
ReplyDeleteOh Kate it is such a hard time isn't it,,,,well for us mums anyway lol. My youngest is 10 and I still desperately miss those times when they were home with me all day. My eldest has just completed year 12 and now is about to embark on his life in the big wide world and I get all teary at that thought too. It is scary to think of him finding his spot in the world, adjusting to the "adult" struggles of finding a job etc etc. I yearn for those days when he was 3 or 4 years old and still with me and and I knew where he was and what he was doing at all times. Growing up is scary and I don't think we, as mum, ever get used to watching our kids move on to the next stage of their lives.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy every second!!
I don't know what to say. I let the older children go off to school with a sigh of relief to be honest. But little Annie... she starts Steiner kindy next term and I can't get my head around dropping her off three morning a week and not to be with her. I hear you I really do. Our babies, they are so so precious, not that the others weren't just there were others in line, but these last little ones grow into your heart I think.
ReplyDeleteMy youngest's high school just recently commented that only 8% of a child's hours alive have been spent at school by the time they finish ... so that should be reassuring.
ReplyDeleteThe two photos with the Maremma are priceless - enter them in a competition or a dog calendar!!
Adorable photos!!!
ReplyDeleteDear Kate , my youngest son turned thirty this year. He is a loving, kind, funny, intelligent,gorgeous man with a lovely wife,a beautiful little boy and a new baby coming along in June we can wrap in love and woolly goodness: )it's such a privilege to be part of my adult sons' life, to know that the little boy I sobbed for in my car that February morning after delivering him to his first day at school is just fine, finer than I ever could have hoped for. That day began a thirst for knowledge and learning that you couldn't imagine. Pepper will be fine, and so will you, yes you will : )
ReplyDeletei can't believe the cold weather clothes you guys are wearing!! beanies!! we are pretty much stuck in the 30's (and quite often the high 30's) here! a land of sticky, sweaty humidity and light and breezy clothing!
ReplyDeleteMy first is about to start school next year. It is bittersweet. On the one hand it is great to see them move onto a new stage in their lives, yet on the other, it is sad that the previous stage is over. Also, a little bit scary. I'm wondering about the difference between first and last children, is it a little less scary, but a little more sad?
ReplyDeleteThat's it exactly Carmel. x
DeleteIt doesnt get any better, my youngest of five daughters has left home, I am heart broken.
ReplyDeleteSo hard to farewell that part of your life, the part with a little person by your side, sharing your days x
ReplyDeleteThis whole entire post and it's pictures are lovely. That's all I have to say, really. ^_^
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