Term 2, A New Beginning

Jin came home from her first school holidays and stepped into Term 2. Three weeks of school, two weeks of break, then back through the gates — and on her first day back, what may well be the last batch of Year 1 starters joined her class. The school was new and strange to them. One child clung to her mother for days, weeping. When the bell rang and mat time began, she would start her day on the teacher's lap. Everyone was finding their feet through a hard beginning.

Jin looked a little subdued. Two of the new girls already knew the girls who'd been in her class. The other two were friends with each other. That made three pairs of old(-ish) friends — and one child standing alone. Jin was that one. On the first morning, she had practised "I need my space" — a phrase to use when a friend sat too close at mat time. But once she got there, that friend was off playing with someone else. Her heart must have sunk a little. So the next day, she rehearsed "Can I play?" over and over. When I picked her up, I asked if it had been a fun day. She told me she had asked her friends if she could play, and they had said no. My own heart dropped. Still, it was fun, she said. How? I asked. She smiled.
"I just thought of you next to me, Mum."

The next morning, I took her in a little earlier and we sat side by side at one of the small desks. We drew each other. I drew the child I love. She drew the mother she loves. As we said goodbye, I told her: Look at the Jin I've drawn for you and pretend I'm right next to you. I'll look at the mum you've drawn me and think of you. And later today, we'll let these two meet again.

Children get rocked by all kinds of small things in group life. The loneliness of having no one to play with. The frustration of words they don't understand. The confusion of not knowing what to do next. In those moments, the person a child looks for is the parent standing nearby. Which is why a parent has to wear calm even when the heart is shaking. We comfort the upset, but the steady, this-isn't-a-big-thing face is what tells a child the wobble will pass. That if they fall, there is a body to come back to that won't fall with them. A child cries in their parent's arms. A parent cries only with their back turned to the child.

Fortunately, Jin has the sweetest sister who cares for her. Hyun comes to find her at every morning tea with her own friends in tow. There's also this girl Shine, Jin's steady companion in ESOL and at lunchtime in the playground. And the older children who become her brothers and sisters every time their paths cross. Inside her parents' arms, and outside them too, the child grows.