Finding her feet

It's taken a few weeks, but Tess has finally settled into the slower and more natural pace of summer holidays. She read in bed for over an hour, stayed in her pyjamas until lunchtime and only ate when she fet like it - and stopped filling every spare moment with Minecraft. (Because there weren't spare moments. There was only life)

I found her mixing paint, still wearing her pyjamas at 1pm and thought how lovely it was that she finally felt free of all the stupid reasonless rules we throw at kids every day:
"Get dressed!"
"Why?!"
"Because.... Ermmmm.... "

It's weird how how life was a rather ugly work hard / play hard mix of school plus Minecraft, with not much in between, until the realisation that she didn't have to rush off every day.

It was this time last year that she developed in leaps and bounds and went back to school able to read and write better than she had been the term before the summer. I believe with all my heart that it was because the pressure was off and she had spent the summer reading and writing for reasons that made sense to her.

However good a school is, however kind and well-meaning teachers are, the system is a bully and society is a bully. We rip childhood away from kids and expect them to toughen up because we think it's good for them and they need it.
It's absolute bullcrap.