The Nursery Blues

Got an awfully bad case of the Mummy guilts last week.
My youngest son, who has been attending nursery school since September, had a day off because he was sick. I wrapped the boy up in a cosy blanket, fed him warm toast and worked from my laptop within ear’s reach of his pitiful pleas for more tea. We lazed around the sofa watching Thomas the Tank Engine, reading books and generally, bar the temperature and the occasional violent regurgitation of foodstuffs into plastic receptacles, had a lovely day.
When I brought him into nursery on Wednesday he cried, begged me to take him home. He said, in front of his teacher, that he didn’t like school, he didn’t like his friends or the toys and that the nursery staff always burnt the toast they give them at break time (which I later found out to be a blatant lie).
My heart broke for the little guy – you and I know that lightly browned toast is a basic human right in most civilised countries – and for a brief moment I did consider taking him home.
The teacher told me that taking him home would be the worst thing I could do. She said that the child would still be sitting on that sofa, watching Thomas the Tank Engine and hollering for more toast when he was 22 years old if I didn’t make a stand now. So I kissed my boy, told him I would be back soon and I walked away, the sound of him screaming ‘Mommy’ ringing in my ears.
You’d think by this stage I’d be well versed in leaving crying children behind in nursery schools. You’d think that by now I’d know that five minutes after I left he would have been distracted by some shiny fire engine and would have forgotten all about me.
But no, the Mummy guilts hit bad. I sat in the car outside. I got out of the car and went to walk back in to get him. I got back into the car. I took out my phone and dialled the number of the nursery to ask if he was OK. Then I hung up before they answered, they would think I was a neurotic Mum.
There are big windows along the front of the nursery. So I formulated a plan whereas I could catch a glimpse of my boy and go home happy, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t screaming the house down with the most severe case of detachment anxiety those nursery workers had ever encountered.
So I inched my way along the school wall like a spy and peeked around the corner to see if I could see my son. And there he was near the window, playing happily with his friend, not a tear in sight. In fact that boy was laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world.
I drank in the scene for a minute. Him forcing a toy horse into the driving seat of a miniature Ferrari, his friend stealing the car and knocking over the horse. And then he looked up, saw me and although the windows were sealed and soundproofed I could fathom, judging by colour of his face, that the sheer volume of the screaming emanating from the depths of that child’s lungs was exceptional, even to the ears of childcare professionals who had years of experience in their field.
Before I ran away I saw that the boy beside him was screaming, the girl to the left of them was crying, the boy at a nearby table began to cry. I can only imagine that the simple matter of me spying on my boy to see if he was crying after me set off a catastrophic chain of events that led to half that nursery wailing at their teachers well into the afternoon.
Sorry…