Radio Silence


Everyone has been telling me that it is a good sign. I am not so sure. Our evening ritual of Skyping has fallen by the wayside. Year Eight, it would seem, is very different from Year Seven. The classes go on for longer, so he doesn't always get time to finish his evening meal, and contact us before prep starts at. By the time that he has finished his homework talking to us becomes a chore - he is just too tired. I would hate to imagine that either of my children ever view talking to me as a task to be ticked off a list. It has become apparent that our son, at age twelve, has become so busy that he no longer has time to talk to us. This has taken some getting used to. For the first week, I was quite angry. We still set the iPad up and waited for the Skype-call to come through ... Nothing. I waited again after eight o'clock ... Still nothing. The dog would start chewing the carpet and scratching the floor. This was usually the time of the day when she gets my undivided attention out on a walk. She didn't understand why I was sitting looking at a blank screen. When she started chewing my foot at about nine o'clock, I decided it was time to yield to the preposterous idea that another twenty-four hours would pass with no news from him, and it was time to honour the unspoken deal I have with the dog; the other unspoken deal - the one with our son - has clearly been reneged on. We were facing an eerie silence.

I found the change of routine (or lack of it) to be as stressful as the lack of contact with our child. Before the conversation happened as regularly as clockwork. The iPad would be set up, and he would usually call five minutes before the arranged time at 6.45. This is what last year trained me to expect. My days were planned around the evening Skype conversation. No evening event could occur before 7pm; I had to be at home so this time in my daily diary was definitively blocked out.  Then suddenly it's gone, and there is nothing to replace it; nothing to fill the void. We could book a baby-sitter for our daughter and start going to the theatre of cinema again ... If only we weren't so confused.

At the weekend following this first week of existential waiting, I felt like being cruel. I wanted him to know that it hurt a little; and that a loyalty scorned turns into a very different creature - something bitter that bites when least expected. But I wasn't cruel. I loved him even more that weekend and cherished every second of conversation and every new revelation about the week that had passed. It was all news. He has been too preoccupied coping with a new schedule and an unprecedented level of exhaustion. I'm a grown-up. I can cope with feelings of disappointment and helplessness. I'll identify them for what they are. I don't have to unleash some sort of subtle sardonic attack. He would find it confusing; he's a twelve year old who needs his dad. Our unspoken deal is involves unconditional love, not punctual Skyping. I've agreed to love him forever, regardless, and that is the least that he should expect.

We had a bit of a chat at the weekend. Hopefully it occurred entirely without rebuke - I worked hard that it would. We agreed that if he has time and energy, he could write a one sentence email at night, just to let us know that he is still alive, and he could write just one word if a sentence seems too taxing. Like Mulder and Scully, I just need to know that, like the truth, he is out there. But this isn't a binding psychological contract. It's just an idea.

This seems to work. I am quite happy to check my emails just before nine in the evening, and see a subject line written by him. I still set the iPad up at 6.45 anyway ... Just in case. It seems that even though you can teach an old dog new tricks; just like chewed feet when it's time for the evening walk, we all still need a routine.

10 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Sending My Child to Boarding School

1. Make them responsible for packing and unpacking. It was this time last year that I felt that I had really failed as a parent. The amount of stuff that was required for the first year at school was overwhelming. It needed an adult to oversee everything, and his mum took charge efficiently and systematically. However, when we were helping him to unpack, I hung his school trousers on the same hanger as his shirts. I thought it an obvious place, but to a child coping with boarding school and in a completely new situation, I may has well hidden them in on a distant planet. On his very first day of secondary school, he couldn't find his trousers and went to to lessons wearing a pair borrowed from a class-mate. We now help him to get everything ready, but he has the overview of what goes into which bag. We leave the unpacking entirely up to him. While other parents are busy settling their children in, I sit in a chair watching him organise himself. Of course I assist by making 'helpful' comments, or 'sarcastic remarks' - depending on your point of view.
   
   
2. Everything needs labels. If it doesn't have his name on, it doesn't get taken to school. We have found ingenious places to stick them: inside the battery covers of calculators and torches; inside covers of dictionaries; the heels of shoes. This is not to suggest for a second that a ballet school is a den of thieves. It's not. However, stuff goes missing; these are children and their heads are full of chaos regardless of how ordered their lives might be. And all their stuff is identical - their calculators suffer the same regulated uniformity as their leotards and character shoes.
   
   
3. It is not what we expected. Regardless of what we anticipated about having a child at boarding school, it has been completely different. His response to being away from home was more dramatic in the first term than we had ever imagined. I had not imagined that there would have been so much crying from one small child - or one confused parent. We always allowed the tears to occur without judgement. It took a long time to realise that he would survive best by coming home as soon as school finishes at the weekend, and to be taken back on Mondays, just seconds before registration starts. It seems that we are not alone. There are a few of us - frazzled by the early start to the week, but fortunate to live reasonably close - throwing our children out of cars at the front door of the school at 8am on a Monday morning. A camaraderie has developed; we wave to each other from behind our windscreens. Before this started, I would never have imagined that our confident and seemingly independent child would require such a rigorous structure. I would also never have thought that every week would begin with a 5.30am alarm, and obsessing over the volume of urban traffic. I don't anticipate my car surviving another winter of this; I might have to upgrade to one that is ten years old - exactly half the age of our current vehicle.
   
   
4. It happens every year. The fact that he has gone off again this September came as a complete surprise to me. For some strange reason I was only pacing myself for three terms. Getting through year seven was my only aim. Starting all over again has been a genuine surprise. My intellect understood the situation, but forgot to inform my emotional and visceral understanding of reality. I guess this means I have to pay the school fees for another year.
   
   
5. Learn the postcode of the school. Before I decided to learn the postcode, sending stuff to the school, or giving family and friends his postal address was irksome. I am relatively literate, but I am unable to learn sequences of numbers. So it took some effort to learn a simple postcode. However it was efficient to have done so. Writing the address out without thinking has improved life's natural flow.
   
   
6. You're not there when you need to be. Stuff happens. Children can be cruel and adults can be careless. When an incident occurs which requires some 'unpacking', we are not at hand to help. Amplification becomes the risk. An issue that could have been talked through in a few minutes bloats to an impossible size and then needs several conversations to be punctured and siphoned. The drainage can sometimes take all weekend, or if it is half-term, all week.
   
   
7. Communal living while at home. I've noticed that boarding school life is infiltrating his behaviour. He ends each meal with taking his own plate into the kitchen. This is something that we haven't asked him to do, and we don't pass comment on. He has also developed the ability to shut down almost completely and focus on an activity while ignoring all distractions around him. He has become a Zen master who can mentally transport himself to a higher mental plane; a necessary skill when living with twelve hyper-active boys and the only tranquil space is one which can be found in his own head.
   
   
8. The end of innocence. After a year at boarding school, our son has been introduced to many things that I would never have imagined him being aware of; unless he were to be joining in with the adult banter at an army barracks. He can curse using lucid and eye-watering imagery ... in French. He seems to have learned the names of items that one might come across in an Anne Summers catalogue, and he has been asking about some double-entendres which fortunately couldn't be explained in front of his younger sister. I know that this is expected for a healthy twelve year old boy, but still the ingenuity of the double-entendres surprised me. I had to think about them, before I 'got them'. It seems that his generation can take the art of school-boy suggestiveness to a completely different level. Kenneth Williams would be proud.
   
   
9. Weekend overload. It took several months to realise that doing nothing in the house that he considers his home, is a luxury. I used to pack the weekend with activities which I thought would be treats. Weekends are a time for him to do nothing, reflect and rest. Sometimes he doesn't move away from a chair for hours - book or iPad in hand. Even walking the dog is too much. The activity of the week needs to find a balance with the inertia of the weekend. It is also an opportunity for him to reconnect with his sister. They only have one childhood, and it is important that they fill it up with memories of each other.
   
   
10. Don't do it. If I could have done anything to not have a son at boarding school, I would have. Not letting him go would have broken his heart. Even though he is thriving and fulfilled, I would selfishly have preferred to see him everyday. My advice to anyone thinking of sending their child to boarding school without good reason, would simply be, 'don't'.