In October, our youngest left kindy. School wouldn't start until March — still five months away — and people were puzzled. Wasn't this the age for socialising, for settling into a routine before the classroom? We understood the concern, yet we had our reasons.
Jin was born when the world was holding its breath. Before her hundredth day, she was already in the pram trailing her oldest sister's school run and her second sister's kindy bus, multiple trips a day, rain or shine. Every time a case appeared at school or kindy, a baby was dragged along for testing, crying through every swab. When the fourth case came through, we pulled our middle daughter out of kindergarten altogether.
We stayed home for a long time. With no playgrounds open, the children's energy spilled into the evenings and bedtimes crept later. Her older sisters had once been asleep by eight, but Jin — younger than either of them had been — lay awake past nine in a bright, noisy house. When she went to bed early, she felt sad at the sound of her sisters still playing. Not from tiredness. From the sting of being left out.
After lockdowns lifted, the pattern held. Outings followed the older two. Jin was home with Mum or strapped into the pram, tagging along. She lived between "you're not old enough" and "you can't do that yet." Still, our sturdy little one followed her sisters everywhere, grinning. We thought about it. Both older girls had been given something Jin hadn't — time at the centre of a parent's world(Both of them did. We were lucky in that).
In an ordinary time, she would have had it too. While her sisters were out at school and kindy, she'd have had Mum to herself for three or four hours a day, without anyone planning it. But it never happened. No matter how much her sisters doted on her, no matter how thoroughly she wielded her cuteness as a weapon of absolute power, she had never once been at the centre of anyone's time.
My husband calls it "playing only child." So she can play only child — for just five months in her early life — that was all we had before all three girls would leave at nine and come home at three, everything shared again. That was everything we had to work with.
