My defining mummy moment might seem a fairly unremarkable It happened a couple of weeks ago. It was a chilly Saturday morning and we were taking our two younger sons to play football. We were running late, as usual, and we stopped the car in the car park outside the grounds. My seven-year-old son jumped out of the car and ran ninety miles an hour onto the pitch on his own and started warming up with the other children.
Now that in itself is not overly impressive I hear you say! But this boy lacks a great deal of self-confidence. He is a lovely boy. Amazing. He is clever, polite, helpful, hard-working and generally brilliant to be around but he has never had a great deal of confidence.
I have talked in a previous blog post about the fact that R went to a different school for his reception year than the school he is at now. I had wanted to go back to work and so moved my youngest son out of playgroup into a nursery for three days a week and R went to a big primary school in town so that I could use the before and after school facilities.
R settled in well at his school and seemed to be doing well, or at least that was what his teacher said. However, slowly and surely, we noticed changes. Less confident, coming home with endless bumps and bruises and then having toilet accidents. Things came to a head at Easter of that year when R refused to get into the car after a trip to my in-laws, as he didn’t want to go back to school.
My husband and I are both teachers and were really concerned when the Headteacher of the school told us that we were being overdramatic and that there was nothing wrong. But there was something very wrong and our gorgeous little boy was quiet, pale, anxious and not wanting to go into school in the morning.
Needless to say, R started at a different school in the following September and as it was a small village school, I had to give up work to take him and his brother there every day. I know lots of people who were really happy with the school that R went to initially and I don’t blame the school, it just wasn’t the right place for my son.
Slowly day by day, the little boy I once knew came back and by the end of his first year, he was a lot happier and regaining his confidence. But it has taken two years for him to totally recover. I really struggled to take him to clubs outside of school as he would have complete panic attacks and I often couldn’t get him out of the car. I managed to get him to Beavers which has been brilliant for him and this local football team, although a recent thing has been great too.
The panic attacks happened whenever he had to go into a situation where he didn’t know anyone or where he didn’t feel comfortable. Even when he had been playing football for a while, he would panic if we were late and on more than one occasion, if we were so late that training or the match had started, he would refuse to play and nothing and no-one would make him!
So as you can see, the late arrival at football the other Saturday, was a massive deal. Not only did he not panic, he ran on to the pitch on his own which made me incredibly proud of him and how far he has come in the last two years.
