Field Trips

Today is a great day.  Mikey has a field trip to a play based on the book "Click Clack Moo".  I'm going dress shopping with Antonia.  Then I'm putting Mia in childcare after school so that Mikey and I can have a "date" at Chuck E Cheese. For the record, I hate Chuck E Cheese and it gives me major anxiety issues just thinking about it, but it's a reward for Mikey getting is behavior back on track, and it's very rare that Mikey and I get alone time.

So yay!! Good day!!

Here's the thing though.  I hated field trips as a a kid.  Not the actual destination - I liked that.  It was the bus ride. And I don't think I've ever told anyone about this before. Not even Mum.

I was always the shy kid, the nerdy kid.  And I never had a best friend growing up.  Every year the teachers put me in classes with no one from the previous year.  I guess they were trying to make me more sociable, but it backfired and I never felt like I had great friends.  Anyway, whenever there were field trips and we rode buses, every one paired up and had someone to sit with.  But I never had someone to sit with. So often I was all by myself with no one to laugh with and talk to on the bus.  Or even worse, I had to sit next to a teacher and make small talk because they felt sorry for me.

Once I was in high school it got a little better.  I had Chucky in 3rd and 4th form, and Lauren and a few others in 5th - 7th form. And I was so grateful for that because secretly I was freaking that I would be sitting by myself again.

It's stupid I know, but as a kid it mattered.  You want to be liked. You want to have someone want to be with you and talk to you.  You want a great friend. And these people who did sit with me are still great friends!! (Hi Lauren - I know you are reading this so I want to tell you thank you.)

So I hope Mikey gets to sit with another kid at school - he's on the shyer side and doesn't really have a best friend at school, but it's only 1st grade so I'm not sure thats really a big issue at this age. And I hope he really likes this field trip. He's been on two field trips before this - the first one he was sooooo sick and just wanted to sit down and didn't care about anything.  The second one he was so scared about that it actually made him sick - he was throwing up and crying when I dropped him off at school.  But once I got him into the classroom and talked to his teacher explaining things, he was fine and really enjoyed himself. And this time he was so excited and practically bounced into the classroom!

I'm always going to be the nervous Mommy and worry about the kids because I never want them to experience what I did in school.  I don't worry about Mia so much, but I see a lot of me in Mikey.  But I will always do whatever I can do to make sure the teacher will help him and watch out for him.