There are....

days when it's hard being 6.5 years old. And school today seemed to prove to be one of those. She came out to me very frazzled and cried almost immediately, which isn't like her at all.  First off, they'd spent the entire day out of their own classroom to complete their individual phonics screening tests. I object to the testing. They're 5 and 6. She got full marks; that's not the point. Not even slightly. And I won't start on my opinion of all the wasted time on the pseudowords. They're 5 and 6 years old, their teachers know their abilities. They don't need formal assessments like this. The thought of next year and yr 6 SATs actually makes me want to vomit. Anyway, whilst she did fine, I think it was probably an underlying factor to her reaction of the day, given the similar responses  from some of her friends.

It was largely a case of "straw that broke the camels back", I think. She has lost her cardigan in the course of the day. The teacher wasn't at all helpful about finding it, so we left without. She bumped into her friend at lunchtime and banged her head. The clasp broke on one of her special handmade bag tags. She cried into my shoulder for a while.

As luck would have it, I had decided that because we had an empty afternoon, I would treat her by picking her up in the car with a tasty from the bakery. Because we were in the car I suggested we go park by her favourite bit of woodland.

She played in fields of buttercups. She sat talking to baby rabbits that she has a magical knack of being able to spot in the undergrowth. We built a den. She scared away the gruffalo with a magic waving device (branch). She laughed at mama on the rope swing. We ran down hills so fast our feet got carried away with themselves. She went down paths just because they looked interesting. She was 6. She was little.

This week especially, I am reminded how much wish I could protect her from so many of the things the world is going to force onto her consciousness and life experiences. I wish these arms of mine could hold her safe from it all forever.