Parent Teacher Association

The relationship between parent and teacher is an awkward one at best. However nicely they frame the critique, it’s inevitably directed at you – how can it not be, in some tacit way, your, the parents’- fault?

It was parent-teacher conferences last week. They have them half termly at Jonah’s school, which seems a little excessive, particularly, when rather then occurring in the evening like they did back in my school days, they block off an entire afternoon, for which I have to dig into my pockets to pay for childcare, and race home like crazy to bagsie the last available appointment.

I was braced. The first time we went, back when Jonah was in nursery, we had high hopes; after all, at that stage in your first child’s development you are craning to get any kind of feedback you possibly can about how advanced they are compared to their peers.

I left in tears. Difficulty relating to his peers, outbursts of aggression, obsessive numeracy; of course I was familiar with all these traits, but when relayed back to me by a professional, with fingers arched, and the words ‘specialist’ bandied about like it’s common currency, it suddenly all seemed real and frightening – that the child for whom I’ve given away my pelvic floor might actually have a diagnosable problem.

Of course, I was preggo with Ava at the time, which is one of the reasons I cried. And I was on the defensive because the teacher who handed me Jonah’s wet trousers day in day out seemed to do it passive aggressively as if I was one of *those* mothers who hadn’t bothered getting her four year old out of nappies. I was, of course being paranoid, but that’s sleep deprivation for you.

We’d discussed it, Tom and I, and thought we’d bide our time before pursuing specialist advice. After all, a lot of three year olds have quirks – and we were novice parents – who were we to know how a normal three year old acts?

When Ava came along, and I fell headlong off the PND cliff, Jonah was having meltdowns everyday after nursery, all the way up the stairs to our duplex. I sought help and was directed to The Hackney Ark, the local children’s special needs service. They performed a gamut of tests and we went along to various sessions with a variety of specialists who came to no fixed conclusion, short of ‘Aspergers tendencies’. There was something amiss, but no one could quite put their professional finger on it. But knowing this alone alleviated the ‘bad mothering’ blame I apportioned myself. And that is pretty much where we stayed until parent teacher conferences a year hence.

Things got a lot better. I was working, and so wasn’t dealing with the daily drudge of a new baby plus chivvying Jonah to get fed, washed, dressed, and out the door for school, quite simply the toughest challenge of my day, and one that was often have me sobbing with frustration, and in dire need of a coffee and a fag – which having a new baby seemed not quit en point.

Lately, Jonah veritably skipped into breakfast club of a morning – something to do with being able to eat as much toast and jam – I’d previously been a porridge fascist – and play games – Connect Four, or swap Match Attacks cards before he had to set about the bothersome task of learning to read for the day.

He was, whenever I saw him – and this was growing less and less as I rediscovered the pleasures of going to the pub with my newly made work colleagues – a pleasure to be around, cuddling me and whispering sweet nothings before bed, when I would wobble in gooey eyed and smelling of gin. At the weekends, exhausted by my work, I was happy to loaf all day in pyjamas, and let Jonah do the same while playing his iPad – happy not to be super mum, but simply just to be. And Jonah responded well to this laissez faire attitude.

So it came as rather a shock, when Jonah’s rather nervous young 1st year teacher, who looked down as she saw us approaching as if embarrassed, fiddled with her papers and, after offering us a seat, took a deep breath and launched into a diatribe about Jonah’s ‘special educational needs.’

If you’re a reformed type A personality like I am, these words are possibly among the more painful you have ever had directed at you by a teacher. After all, I’d always been adored by my teachers. Not so much my peers at school, but getting approval from a teacher was pretty much my raison d’etre for several years during my early tweens. So it cut to the quick to get negative feedback about my son. “Difficult to handle”, “tantrums”, “socially awkward”, I was being stung by a swarm of criticism, which I struggled not to take personally, as my son and his future was roundly trounced by a jittery young women flushed by too much caffeine, who advised us, “and it is our professional opinion,” that Jonah should be assessed.

Which kickstarted the process in which we are now in the midst. I can see it from the teacher’s perspective, I think. After all, I’d fought in the face of day trippers and casual onlookers who had nonchalantly waved away my concerns about Jonah with a “he seems fine to me”, which, when faced with the daily onslaught of looking after a difficult child always struck me as somewhat blase, not to mention a bit disrespectful to my opinion as his mother – after all, I could hardly be making it up, could I?

But hearing it from a professional is always worse. So as I said, I was braced for this last. And red-cheeked from bombing it home from Holborn to Hackney on my bike in the iron wind, when I knew full well my work colleagues were going for a cocktail session at their private members’ bar, I was a little tense as I accepted the pint sized child’s seat, and awaited this half term’s verdict.

When it came, couched as positively as possible by an enthusiastic teacher who could have worked on children’s telly had she not found her vocation in the classroom, was ‘he’s doing much better.’ And that, dear reader, was music to my ears.

Of course, when Ava was described by her nursery teacher, she of the passive aggressive wet trousers, but now beaming at us as perfect parents of a perfect daughter, as ‘a dream child’, I barely registered. It was, quite honestly, as expected, but it’s sad that those words I would have longed to hear about my firstborn were water off a duck’s back about my sweet, patient little girl, who spends her days pretending to be a cat, and being Jonah’s biggest cheerleader. Such is the fate of the easy child. God forbid she ever find her claws.

(spoiler from 2025… she did!)