Preparing for Boarding School

I know its one of those contentious topics. My working life has been working in state sector education, its where I choose to put my efforts, I know how much the input of one family can make a difference to a school, and yet here we are, Firstborn off to boarding school 5000 miles from the family home. I think, if we're honest, we each have areas where we fall short of our best lights. If you're tempted to write to me today about our decision, don't, today, D-Day minus Two, ain't the day, take the time instead to muse on your own less consistent areas.  But I thought, nonetheless I'd write on preparing for boarding school from the expat perspective.

Visiting the final choice school in rural England last year the head told us with relish about their first boarder from Afghanistan, who had just joined the school.
'A week in when I asked her what she'd found different, she grinned, and told me she'd just seen a woman on a bike, cycling!  You don't see that in Afghanistan, she said.'
Firstborn and I have now been back in UK for a week, engaged in the frenzied expat shopping scavanger hunt of items for a new school, a new season. :
'Yes you will need a jumper or two. I know they aren't that stylish, but warmth matters too. Yes and some gloves. And you want your goretex raincoat to be longer than that. Yes even longer than that.'
Standing back and recognising that items that were acceptable in not-very-judgmental-Nairobi, now look shabby even in not-very-swish-South-Wales. As we've scratched our heads in despair, comparing the list of essentials with the paltry pickings we find, that Afghan girl - and her bemused mother facing the same shopping list - have been vivid before me. Because difficult as it is to find astro boots in Swansea, I'd guess its far more difficult in Kabul, or on first arrival in a new country.

So what advice would I give to others from my experience?
Plan ahead. 
I thought visiting our dentist in March for an August departure would be ample time to get a brace diagnosed and fitted. But no. For while Nairobi has orthodentists, first they take a cast and x-rays, which are sent to a sporadically held Dental Panel in another country, to assess whether this brace is really needed and therefore might be part-reimbursed, or is just cosmetic.  We got an email from the Dental Panel two days before FirstBorn left Kenya, - but we now need to wait for the cast and the x-rays to wing their way back to Nairobi, for the brace to be made. Halfterm maybe?

Confer with experts.
Life in UK has moved on in our three years abroad. I am a timetravel waif from the 1970s dumped into 2012 without any of the necessary skills.  Thank you my UK mum mates who advised on clothes shops for 13 year old girls (New Look, H&M, River Island; Jack Wills & Hollister if you've come into the money).  And facebook friends and the managers of several phone shops who patiently explained the pros and cons of different mobile phone payment options, several times by the end.  Thank you expat mums who recommended tracing round the feet of SecondBorn so I could still get Clarks school shoes for him, while he stays in Nairobi. Snarls to those Swansea Shoppers in stitches, listening to the mother daughter changing room dynamic 'You can't wear that out', squared, cubed and fastforwarded when you're buying clothes for a new culture, where the vagaries and negotiated boundaries of Nairobi dress codes are irrelevant.

Manage your emotions
FirstBorn is flying the nest. I can't protect her from what is coming next, she'll be independent, without me - so my residual role as Mum for this stage is to ensure there is a nametaped mattress waiting beneath the clifftop, and that she has appropriately sized, sourced, regulation coloured wings to wear as she flaps away. Or so it feels in my surge of panic. 

I know this feeling of old. As she rushed off to pre-school, could she reliably wipe her bottom independently?  As SecondBorn started school, could he find his gloves, scarf and coat from the pile of others on the floor of the classroom?  And now, aged 13, can she do enough of the other things needed for independent twenty first century living?

As we scurried around South Wales's shops under a teetering pile of five towels and a skype headset we have discovered our own rhythm. Reduced to tears by the man in the small independent sports shop we stopped for our first reviving coffee at 9.05 am.  When confused, when stressed, when anxious, when faced with a long list of clothes for a season you haven't encountered for the last three years, a cup of tea every 90 minutes is primary health care.

Make sure you have a postal address
This is not a trip to do exclusively from cutprice travellodges. This is a trip where you need a kindly friend or relative to receive the parcels of ebay purchases, and a flourishing local market to supplement the shortfalls. Alarm clocks, skype headset, laptop bag and hockey stick. Welly boots and school shoes, trainers and padlocks. You need access to someone's internet, to rejoin Tesco Clubcard (now only online), to arrange insurance for the flute, excess insurance for the hirecar, to liaise with the soulmates who will jolly you along as you howl into your pint.  You'll be doing those Mum things, - shaping gumguards - which you just can't do from a travellodge room. Today's instructions required a saucepan, boiling water, a slotted spoon & a mirror - possible from someone's house, just impossible when all you have is a Corby trouser press and a dinky kettle (fused).  And anyway an extra set of hands will come in handy for the marathon nametaping extravaganza that lies ahead.

Bring multiple proof of address and identity.
You'd think money launderers might be dealing in bigger figures than a debit account for an under-16 year old with an ATM card only and no overdraft. But we have to comply with the same legislation. As I brought out the piles of correspondence which proved only our complicated situation but not the address in which I was trying to open her account - how many 13 year olds have utility bills in their name anyway? - the kindly manager heaved a sigh. And thought, I think, if I were a money launderer, I might have prepared a better story. It's the kindly logic I love in UK.

For me this is a time of huddling close. Huddling close to our Firstborn while she's in my grasp, and to our denuded family on the sofa once I'm back. But huddling close too to my mates, the other parents going through this in Kenya. This stage (13+) is a time of boarding school for all but a handful who continue school in Kenya, whether its boarding in Kenya for the majority, or abroad, for a few. So all her peers are away too, though closer to hand than her.  As I loiter in Britain waiting for the first weekend when I can spring her from school, I'd been wondering what I could do that would meet my needs to be stimulated, amongst people, but allow me space to be probably actively miserable too.  I'll be going on a walking holiday, alone, in Cumbria, where I spent so many happy childhood and teen holidays, and to a writing conference. Distraction therapy I hope, while our love makes her way, with us at one remove.

Know your Limits

Nothing punctures the smugness of a smug parent who thinks she's got it in her stride more than her child moving to a new stage.  Baby to baby who rolls. Child who holds onto the buggy while walking down the street to child who rushes towards the dual carriageway to push the button on the pelican crossing.  Child who enjoys going to a film with her family to preteen who wants to hang out independently with her 11/12 year old mates.

When we left UK, Firstborn was just 10. We were part of a closeknit small town community and one block from a large, safe park.  She knew 'safehouses' and all the parents of similar aged children in a two mile radius. We knew their phone numbers. She had been walking to the corner shop to spend her pocket money for years. She and her friends had passed cycling proficiency tests at school and spent summer evenings whizzing round the neigbourhood in a small tame gang, stopping off for popcorn at one house or another, and returning home as per their curfew.  It was a model we, her parents, had known ourselves, with which we felt at ease.

Returning back for a holiday after a year away, the peer group boundaries had moved.  Now the friends, about to leave primary school, were allowed to go for a communal meal and early evening film in the nearby mall unaccompanied.  They were about to start secondary school, to travel by bus or trains to schools up to 10 miles away.  Several were allowed shopping in SmallTown centre with a friend.  We, Mother and Daughter alike, were wistful, thinking of the things which were possible there, which it felt too insecure to allow in Nairobi.

And now her Nairobi group would like to be let off the leash for an afternoon. They're a sensible lot.  Not a cause for concern were the external environment controllable. And much of the time here it feels as if it is. But is that because we ignore and shut out the nagging fears about which we can do nothing?  Or is that just usual anxiety, when giving children greater leeway? We get regular email security alerts and incident reports. Lots of them. From D's employer. From friends. From a global security company here. Some understandable, some straws flying in the wind. But who knows which is which? There's a standard alert  recommending we avoid malls and places where foreigners hang out, in case of bombs.  It's a perennial alert, like in IRA times it doesn't deter me from a cappucino midweek, or from leisure trips en famille.  But let Firstborn and her mates go bowling alone in possible PrimeTarget mall by the United Nations, or go to a film in another mall, which already has bomb checks on  each car?  Well suddenly that feels one big step too far.

Ever since I trained as a first aider with a traumatised paramedic who'd coordinated triage in the Heysel Stadium tragedy, I've been prone to imagine the worst case scenario.  Scenes from Casualty, everywhere. Entrusting baby FirstBorn to her marvellous, loving, experienced childminder, along with instructions on handling the frozen icecubes of babyfood, I looked her in the eye and was clear, 'I'm looking to you to get her out if there were a fire or an accident.'  Agreeing playdates with schoolmums I'd move from gratitude to pernickity puncitiliousness 'I always put the visiting children on our safety booster seats when I'm driving, I expect you to do the same with my children.'  Ooerr, steady.  So it felt today that the only way to square the independence vs security circle was for one of us parents to set up a mulish basecamp in the mall, far enough away not to cramp her style, close enough to be texted to dive in, in a fluke nightmare scenario.

But that's to assume that we are the only parents to have reservations, or that all reservations are similar.  We had wanted a clearcut group pre-agreed agenda and a security parent closeby. Others had been anxious about the participation of the opposite sex in the trip. Others still had vetoed a film, while we had been helping Firstborn to clarify end times of all the shows.  The group-agreed start time of the trip shifted, evening by evening, from 12, to 2. The mulish Security Parent saw her whole Saturday afternoon disappearing.  As we were leaving for the event itself, Firstborn got another call from her mates. They were at a hockey tournament which their school was hosting.  And on arrival there its groundrules had changed. As the hosting school, all host participants must stay till the bitter end. No rejoicing in lesser athletic prowess and skulking off early. No enjoying your Saturday afternoon, continuing with what you or your family had signed up to. And still, they reported no end was in sight. And no clarity for Firstborn or the mulish SP. 

I drew my line in the sand there. Happy to support you to have fun independently, but this, today, feels an ill-fated venture. Do you want to go ahead with the two (male) friends still committed, maybe hanging on for hours for the others to arrive?  Or would you like to rearrange for a day in the holidays?  She had wanted to be with the whole group.  The hockey friends were still stuck at the tournament at 4, two hours after the latest agreed rendezvous, hours and hours and hours after its morning start.  Not their fault, but not the universe doing its bit. 

Its my culture, not the culture here. But the key bit I remember from being out independently as a teenager is that you stick with your mates.  And for matters beyond their control, this was made impossible for Firstborn's mates today.  I really, really, really think that in letters to parents sent by schools, they need to be clear in advance on groundrules, end times, participation obligations. The assumption here, and on so many other occasions, is that the family has nothing better to do, no other child, or foresooth, the free unfettered leisure time of the caretakers to consider. An assumption that the Prodigal Child has a driver at her personal behest, who won't care - or might care, but won't protest - if an event assumed to finish at midday drags on till 5.  I think its a power thing. We, the school, are the important ones. You, the child, the parents, comply with what we want, even if we've only just told you.  It ignores the power of children to know their own minds, to choose. It ignores their growing power as a peer group, who make independent sorties possible for their peers, if they too are there. 

I know there are bigger issues one might take on.  But this is the third weekend in a row where a compulsory school event has dragged on, and on, on and on. My kids weren't even invited to this one, and still it impacted on us. So today its the need to communicate end times, to model clarity of communication, so we can support our children to grow more independent, safely, to themselves communicate with responsibility, for which I'm standing.