First ever parents' evening

There had been no obvious reasons to be overly concerned but due to the fact I get precious little out of Ben after picking him up from school there was a vague worry that he was hiding several warnings and a trip to the headmistress’s office from me.

As his dad and I took our seats, thankfully not the tiny little ones that the kids use, we were encouraged to look through his learning journal.

A lovely book with loads of photographs in of Ben seemingly taking an active and enthusiastic role in and out of the classroom.

Dinosaurs did, unsurprisingly, feature quite heavily in the shots but he really did look like he was enjoying himself and it dawned on me that there was this large part of his life that I had no direct involvement in, and he was doing just fine without me thank you very much. Exactly as it should be.

What did make us chuckle though were the pages that he filled in on a Monday when they return to class and they were obviously encouraged to talk about what they got up to of a weekend. To say Ben’s had told a few porkies was the understatement of the term.

Apparently we go off to look at dinosaurs quite regularly, real ones from the sounds of it. Either that or one entry read “we stayed at home and did nothing.” Brilliant. The teacher thinks we are either expert palaeontologists or just dead boring and unable to muster ourselves to even go out for a walk.

His little sister’s first birthday didn’t even get a mention – shocking.

I made a mental note to have a better debrief on a Sunday evening just to recap all the things we have done over the preceding two days.

To sum up though the short report, bearing in mind he has only been at school five minutes, was just great. He has settled well and (I quote) is a lovely member of the class. I stopped short of blubbing but nodded very enthusiastically.

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