7 weeks is a really, really long time when your kid is on school holidays.

Lucy is a great kid, she’s funny, she’s friendly and she is generally pretty easy going. I know how lucky I am to have her, she’s always wanting to help me out, she’s great with Oliver and she is the kind of kid that people point to and say ‘if you could guarantee me one of them, i’d have more..” She’s five-and-a-half (and you can never forget to add the ‘half’) and generally a lot of fun to be around. But I have a job, and Matt has a job, and her job, as I’ve always told her is to work hard at school, be a good friend and help her brother. Oliver’s job is to figure out how to be cute right at that exact moment where I think I’ve lost every last ounce of patience. He’s still working on it.)

So, what happens when everyone has a job, everyone has a routine, and then suddenly one…doesn’t?

Anarchy reigns supreme, that’s what.

My house, oh my house. It’s been clean one time in the past (almost) two months. And that was when Matt took the kids to his mothers’ place for a week. Lucy has come to work with me for five weeks out of seven. She has shone her cute and adorable on all the girls I work with, and talked their ears off. She looks cute from a distance, let me tell you, but the girl, she will talk all day if you let her. And telling her to please, play quietly for a half hour? Oh she can’t tell time. “Is half an hour up yet? No? How will I know? Can I just tell you this one other thing….?” Sorry about that! <insert inane conversation here>

I’m not sure why any child needs a seven week break from school. As far as I can tell, the only thing she’s gained from having such a long time away from her ‘job’ is a complete loss of appreciation for the people she lives with, and a new word in her vocabulary. It’s the “B” word – “I’m boooooooored.”

But looking at her on Tuesday morning, wearing last years uniform that finally fits her, with her shiny new shoes, her eye blindingly white socks (WHITE SOCKS ON A 5.5 YEAR OLD. WHY?!!) and her hair tied back ready for her first day of year one I was struck by how grown up she is. She’s changed a lot in these past seven weeks. She’s grown up, grown out. She’s forgotten some of her sight words, learnt others from reading entirely inappropriate materials such as the TV guide. Her skin is browner from a summer in the pool, her posture better from holding her shoulders back, her head higher.

This year, she has gone from a preppie, to a ‘grade oner’. This is big news, you  just ask her.

And listening to her chatter away when I collect her each afternoon about her new friends and her new adventures as a big kid, I am struck by the knowledge that this time last year she was a shy, introverted little girl who I had so much worry about. I feared how she would adapt socially within the school setting after spending most of her young life in a Montessori education, shaping who she wanted to be on her terms. I worried about her reading, how would she learn to read? I worried about Math – I am notoriously awful at it, and I wanted her to excel, to be better than I so as she could work out the change for me when we go to get fuel, or out on a sneaky donut date.

I worried about this girl of mine, that this would be too much for her. And now I look at her and I just think… “what if I had never sent her to prep? What if that little girl from last year, that shy, timid, quiet little girl was starting in year one right now…”

Sending her to prep was the best thing I ever did. I can’t imagine sending her, of her development last year, right into a year one setting. She’d be eaten alive. Already she has reading homework. Some kids in her class, they don’t know how to read. They didn’t do prep. She’s doing basic math – some kids in her class, they don’t understand, they’ve never been in a classroom environment before.

Last year I was worried about there not being enough ‘play base’ in the prep curriculum. This year I am so eternally grateful to her teacher for laying down the law, for encouraging her, for pushing her and for making her do her job and participate and be a willing learner so as she would excel and succeed this year. This year, I am so grateful for prep.

But I’m still scared from the seven weeks of school holiday, and I think I need to write a strongly worded letter to the education department. Because SEVEN WEEKS OF HOLIDAYS -  aint nobody got time for that. {Unless they would like to pay me to have seven weeks off as well. In that case, I’ll make the time.}