Julie Jay: 'Second week syndrome' is alive and well at the start of new school year

Despite skipping into his new school last week with nothing short of glee, this week my second-born is finding things tricky. His mother isn’t doing much better

Number two has been kicking up a fuss as we enter week two of being back to school. Picture: iStock

Second week syndrome is a very real thing — just ask my family. Last week, we all skipped off to school just delighted to have an excuse to get dressed before the afternoon and grateful to have somewhere to go which didn’t involve heated exchanges in supermarkets about how small people can’t drive the trolley if they’re going to continually hit off mammy’s ankles like it is a bloodsport.

But this week has been a different story, because when it comes to managing these transitions, no two children are the same. Despite being virtually the same chronological age going into naíonara, my two boys seem somehow to be at different stages when it comes to embracing formal education.

By formal education, I of course mean colouring with a better array of crayons and under the watchful eyes of their teachers who are, it must be said, pretty adept at getting small children to do the unthinkable — follow instruction.

Monday was particularly tricky, with Number Two kicking up such an awful fuss that I found myself in the car park bawling crying, and in the end begged him for an embrace. As his tiny arms interlocked around my neck, I suddenly felt like channelling Sally Field in Not Without My Daughter and making a break for it. Of course, the small difference between Sally Field’s character and me is that instead of escaping a tyrannical regime by traversing a Middle Eastern desert, I would be fleeing a colourful community centre in West Kerry by exiting the national road at a slow, measured pace.

Any parenting expert will tell you that when your child doesn’t want to go somewhere, the worst thing you can do is cling to them like a limpet to a rock and cry with them. I don’t know much about parenting, but I’m fairly sure that page one of the handbook would reiterate that the main point is to offer comfort and strength in times of woe.

Instead, my three-year-old took one look at my smudged mascara and even in the throes of upset, I definitely detected some side-eye. It was a side-eye which said: ‘Mom, you do realise I am only here for three hours a day,’ but he had the decency to refrain from pointing out the obvious. Knowing, as he does, that he is Mammy’s very last baby. He knows this because I tell him on repeat, and I also like to remind his father daily that this baby production line is officially closed.

Eventually, I prised him away from me and scampered off before I could think better of it.

From behind the door, his cries pierced my soul, and the first thing I did was throw on some Damien Rice in the car so that the music complemented my melancholic mood.

In the space of the 10 minutes it took to get into work, the naíonara teacher had texted to say that he was fine. In my emotional state, I wondered if this was merely a ruse from handing my P45 into my boss, but really I was just grateful to know that my boy hadn’t thrown an Elton John in the interim.

Of course, on a rational level, it’s hard to explain my upset to someone who hasn’t experienced the heartache of handing over your most prized possession and hoping against hope it comes back to you unbroken.

Yesterday, I tried to relay this internal struggle to a friend. “I know exactly what you mean,” he said.

“I had to check in my favourite Marten guitar on a flight last week, and I was practically crying,” he said, stirring his matcha latte (I don’t need to tell you that this friend also has a beard).

“I couldn’t relax until it was back in my arms,” he continued.

Who was I to argue with a man who was still clearly feeling sensitive after surviving the trench warfare that was the Janis Joplin campsite at Electric Picnic?

It was precisely because his Converse were still caked in mud that I didn’t point out that a guitar and a child are hardly the same thing, not least because I can’t check in a child on a flight, as much as we might want to when a tantrum tests us.

The next day at drop off, his father reports that Number Two was once again kicking up a fuss, and I am once again questioning how we could afford to pay car insurance if I just packed in my job to hold his hand at home whilst reading about Tigers Coming to Tea on a full-time basis.

But each day, things got a little better, and by Friday, there were reports of Number Two doing his excited dance for his teacher as he crossed the threshold — a sign, I hope, that all will be well if we give this a little time.

These transitions are as much transitions for us parents as they are for the kids, so if you do hear some Damien Rice blaring from a Toyota Avensis, please know there is no need for alarm. We are just having a little wallow, and we will be fine.