The holidays are over and we had such a good time that I naively thought the children would be delighted to go back to school and tell their friends all about it.
How naive I could be!
Our theme-park venturing, dressing up for Halloween, friends visiting, house-decorating and Tintin-watching efforts were rewarded with an almightly wail on Wednesday morning (and a similar one on Thursday), the first two days back at school. In fact, I began to speculate, the overstimulation and unrealistic level of fun during the holidays probably backfired and made the return to a routine and to reality seem doubly grim. Of course, the early morning fog and rain did not help matters either.
But once I had untangled the 'post-holiday blues' from the 'dismal weather dumps', I got to the heart of the problem: 'Oh, Mummy, it is just sooo hard!' groaned my elder son. When I pushed him to explain just what was so hard, he finally admitted: 'Everything! Our whole life here. The school is more boring, there is no sitting-on-the-carpet time. Doing homework in French is so hard. Paying attention in class is really difficult. Break times are tough - I still don't have any special friends. And when it rains, we are not allowed to play outside. I miss my friends in England. And I don't like the house. It takes me ages to fall asleep at night. The roof makes creaking noises. And we have to wake up a whole hour earlier, according to English time.'
Well, we managed to resolve the last of these problems, explaining that we are now operating on French time rather than English time. But the other complaints made me feel sad and helpless. Especially when he was echoing many of my own sentiments (although I don't miss sitting-on-the-carpet time quite as much). And then I realised that I had been anticipating this and that my over-abundance of holiday activities had been designed to counteract this loneliness and displacement that both my children and I are still feeling. As was the shopping therapy I had been engaging in for Christmas. Or the effort to book our next trip, our next holiday, our next fun item...
Not that it's wrong to reward yourself from time to time, but this reward mentality is starting to feel like bribery. And it makes our new life, our new everyday seem even more humdrum and insufferable by comparison. Instead of saying: 'If you do your homework all term without complaints, we will go to Europa Park.' (which was what I was hinting at the weeks before the holidays), I should say 'Just think of the languages you will speak, the friends you will have all over the world, the things you will be able to do in the future...'
Yeah, right! When even people in their 30s and 40s find it hard to remind themselves of the long-term advantages when faced with short-term discomforts, what chance have I got to convince an 8-year-old? Now, where was that great offer for Disneyland Paris again?
