First time taking a child to school

Realising that it was finally time for my daughter to go to school was met with mixed feelings. Generally, anxiety, speculation, emotional pressure, and joy were the commonest characteristics of my daily life, especially whenever I imagined what day one of my child’s education journey would be.

Preparations
From late December 2016, when schools started doing interviews for new entrants, my wife and I almost became “school tourists” as we moved from school to school trying to compare school requirements vis-à-vis the educational environment. Key issues on our expectations list were convenience, affordability and serenity of both the classes and school environment.

Interview and admission process
Given that we had never decided on which school we would send our child to, this was one of the hardest stages of our decision-making process. We sent our child to various schools for entry interviews, paid admission fees but still proceeded with comparing shools until we finally settled for one.

First day at school
As a person who never attended kindergarten during my school times, what I found while I dropped off my daughter to school was the funniest thing in my life. In fact, prior to the opening day, my daughter was so excited to be going to school in that she even got a fever but when we arrived at school, the excitement was short-lived as I found almost the entire kindergarten crying.
My daughter who had told me many stories before immediately told me “Daddy, let’s go back home” right after entering her classroom because the noise of crying babies was unbearable and threatening as the classroom would be compared to an emergency room.
Children would get hold of any parent they see nearby and make alarms begging that parent to take them to their mothers. I almost lost my shirt buttons as almost half of the class clung to me to take them back to their mothers (not forgetting those who wanted their sisters, brothers, aunt, plus so and so). I will never forget this first day.

Worst / hardest moment
Two distinct scenarios would explain my worst moment on that day.
First, is when I visited some schools and realised their school requirements exceeded their tuition. How can you ask me to pay huge sums of money as tuition and then you want me to bring almost everything the school uses moreover in large quantities? I couldn’t stop asking what the use of the school fees was for.
Secondly, was when the driver of the school van brought back my daughter that day after classes and informed me he would not be picking my child from home in the morning because my home is “off the highway”. I couldn’t take this in as I had already paid half of the school fees and all the requirements.
Asking me to wake up every morning and take my child to the highway was in every way an insult to a parent who had entrusted the school to take care of his child in an appropriate manner.
The joy and pride I had gotten from this school was quickly sent to the limbo as I immediately asked the school to refund my money so that I could transfer my child to another school that is ready to protect my child from such abuse by the drivers.
Thankfully, the head teacher acted professionally and resolved this issue so that my daughter was picked from home the entire last week.

Prepare the child
Informally begin to teach your child about numbers and letters as you go about your daily lives. While unpacking grocery bags, for instance, you can count the items and ask them to count with you. You can ask them to put your cans in size order, or to alphabetise them if they already know some letter sequences.
Try to encourage your child to participate in group activities whenever they occur, such as during birthday parties. If you know they are reluctant to join in games like “football,” practice these at home with him. You can also take him to playgrounds, pools, libraries, and other neighbourhood places where he can meet other children and learn to play with them.
Besides learning to be aware of others, children who begin kindergarten need to be aware of themselves. Help them memorise basic information about themselves such as the correct spelling of their name, their age, address, and phone number.

The writer is CEO, Equator Partners Ltd