Three things.

[sister_luck]

At one of the gift shops at Sanssouci they sold t-shirts for toddlers that brought out the inner feminist in me. The one for the boys was blue and had "future king" printed on it and the one for the girls was pink and said "always a princess".

I park my car on the street. When I got my bag out of the car the other day, I noticed a familiar peppery smell. There's rocket growing in the cracks of the pavement.

Something that will take some getting used to after teaching teenagers: Today a little boy welled up because he couldn't find his mum who was supposed to pick him up in front of the school. She was there, but he was so worried that he told her to come at 12 instead of 12.20 that he didn't see her.

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Aw poor kid. Sometimes they cry at our secondary school as well, and those are your year 7.

My year fivers hardly ever cry, unless they had a row or something. But then again they are the older kids of primary school, so they know the drill already. But I guess there are kids that would well up if they can't find their mother.

It's something different completely, isn't it, the little ones?

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

And he wasn't in school today - I thought I had seen his mum's car in front of the school, but maybe I was mistaken. One of her colleagues called the office later to let us know that T wouldn't be in. I hope he shows up tomorrow.

I know I had terrible first-day-at-new-school nerves as a kid complete with panic attacks with nausea and throwing up, but once I got through the first day I was fine.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

That's no fun way to start school. I hope it'll turn out okay for him!

I always had nerves, but when I changed school after 6th grade to go to secondary school I didn't go there on my own. Almost all the girls I went to school with the year before were going to that school, so I ended up in a class with some girls I already knew, and it wasn't that scary. And Big Sis attended the school as well, so I knew about it.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine. He didn't strike me as especially sensitive, just a little overwhelmed and maybe overprotected.

It took me years to understand these panic attacks - most of the time I never actually realized that I was nervous, over-excited or worried about something and I couldn't cope with them at all.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I had the same thing with stress situations. I just felt really really bad and it wasn't until I was practically grown up that I realised I had been under a terrible amount of stress.

Seems we turned all right nonetheless, didn't we?

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, mostly, I'd say in my case.

Self-awareness takes a long time to acquire (and of course, I don't mean total self-awareness, just the realization of how one reacts in certain situations).