These weeks we are of big changes at home. I have returned to my work full time, not without regrets. Some regrets because I see that I'm not doing the same with my little daughter than with the oldest.
I know that you can never do the same with the children (or so I had heard), but in the same way that we kept the issues of not going to daycare or asking me for leave until they started school, if I could have done more similar in the dining room theme ...
This year the little girl starts school, and both stay in the dining room, because due to our schedules it is impossible for us to pick them up to eat at home, as it had been until now.
Until last year, with Emma at home, every day we picked up Mar from school to come to eat and then return. It wasn't always easy, but we wanted it to be that way because it seemed to us that you eat better at home and, above all, you don't spend so many hours in a row at school.
But Emma, just three years old, without ever going to daycare, stays in the dining room with her sister. Y every day I wonder if it would not have been better to continue part-time so she (and her sister) would eat at home and not spend so many hours in the dining room.
Fortunately the girl goes to school happy (although the first few days I wanted to go to the sister's class) and she eats very well, but occasionally she breaks my heart telling me "Mom, I miss you in the dining room"…
Of course, I hide the tear and tell her that I miss her too much, but that it is impossible for me to eat with her because work prevents me. The teacher has told me that sometimes she cries when it's time to go to the dining room and that "within what fits" is normal.
A very big change for children
I can only think that the girl really misses me, as it is evident that she misses her sister, whom she sees in the dining room but with whom she cannot sit because they are organized by classes.
At the end of the day without prior notice has always gone from eating with family to eat in a strange place and with strange people (which will soon cease to be, yes). Very big changes.
When the notes arrive saying that he has eaten and behaved very well, we are glad. But we have also been told several times that Emma falls asleep in the dining room, during the meal. No doubt children spend too many hours at school, and no matter how much we go to bedtime, it seems that getting up early is not going well ...
I would have liked to do it the same as with the major in the dining room, but the circumstances have not been the same. I could have, I would have liked it, it would have been better ... sometimes I think there are too many things that I would like to change!
That phrase that my daughter is telling me lately often, that she misses me in the dining room, helps me to reflect on all this and to consider other ways to do it, although the decision is already made. And above all it helps me to realize that I miss them too.
Perhaps the only way to do the same with the two girls would have been for me to be pregnant again with the corresponding leave, leave and leave. Or that it would have been my husband who did it this time. And then, maybe, my little daughter would tell me, as the oldest did, "I want to stay in the dining room!".
Photos | arvindgrover and 55Laney69 on Flickr
In Babies and more | School canteens and their rules, Recommendations to families about school canteens, Ready? We started the senior school
