I knew it… I just knew there was a reason for his morning headaches and sore tummy and occasional vomiting.  There was no way that it was a tummy bug.

This morning, after he complained again of a headache and sore tummy and said that he didn’t want to go to school, I decided that I wasn’t going to let it slide again.  It took me half an hour of talking, but eventually the truth came out.

He’s being bullied at break time in the school play grounds by a “gang” of Grade 4′s (he’s in Grade 2).

If he’s on his own, they hold him, and pinch him and tease him.  If he’s playing with his friend Angelique they laugh at him.  If he tries to play with the boys, they hold him back until his friends disappear and then he can’t find them.

So he’s playing alone most of the time.

It makes me SO SO mad! The school is adament that their bully policy works.  But it’s clearly not working at all.

I tried to tell him to stand up for himself, but he doesn’t want to be a bully too (which is what the policy says).  So he refuses.

You see, a few years ago he was bullied by a kid in his class.  We got him to stand up for himself and the bullying stopped, and as a result he eventually got labelled a bully too… and now he doesn’t want that to happen again.

AAarrrrggghhh!

No wonder he hasn’t been wanting to go to school.

Lance spoke to his teacher this morning because Bradley actually doesn’t know the names of the boys in question.  They better do something about it.

This makes me a VERY unhappy bunny, and I’m uber grumpy today as a result.

Lance got a call from the school yesterday asking us to attend the assembly this morning because Bradley was going to get a merit award.  Now, for those who can’t remember last year’s similar story… the school has a system for the junior grades where every child has a turn to get a merit award in the year.  They’re given to the kids weekly in assembly, and Bradley’s happened to be the first one.

He got it for being kind and courteous and being a gentleman.

Awww, my boy )

When I took him home (he wasn’t actually feeling very well today but I made him go to assembly before I took him straight home), he told me that he thought it was because he lets the girls go into the classroom first.  He also told me that he’s been teaching the other boys in his class about girls having to go in first… and he waits for his teacher too.

Sweet hey?!

On the subject of teachers, I’m hoping that she’s going to be ok.  She doesn’t seem very at ease with the kids, and she’s very quiet.  Now, I know she’s new to the school and all that… but I’m not getting a great level of comfort from her at the moment.

Seriously, could the teachers not have eased the parents into this school lark a little gentler?  Oh no, not Bradley’s school… first weekend of Grade 2 and he had a project!

So I spent a few hours today trying to find photos of him for a Life Snake. My oath what a lot of effort… by me of course! If this is a taste of the next few years, I’m going to have even less spare time!

It was interesting for me though… I got to see how much my photography has progressed in the last 7 years!! And one of the photos we chose in the end, was taken by Bradley.

Connor goes to school tomorrow.

He’s not a happy camper.

We decided during last year that it would be best to move Connor to Bradley’s school for Grade 000.  We felt that the level of education at his current school wasn’t fabulous… I didn’t see much artwork coming home or displayed and that worried me.  I also wasn’t wild about the playground which had slowly but surely shrunk in size and become more and more sandy, and eventually partly tarred during the time he was there.

Kids need grass. I’m adamant about that.  SEriously, we live in Africa, what’s this rubbish about kids playing on tarred playgrounds?!

So, we decided it was best to move him to Grade 000 at Bradley’s school.

But… he doesn’t want to go tomorrow…at all.

And now I’m feeling bad about our decision.  We can’t change it, because we’ve already paid for the entire year for him.

But he’s only 3 years old… to wear a uniform at the age of 3 sounds a little cruel.  Big school is a massive step, and we only started Bradley at that school in Grade 00… there’s a big difference between age 3 and age 4.

So wish us luck for tomorrow (

Bradley was very upset the other day, and after a bit of probing, he just started crying that the other kids wouldn’t play with him.

Anyhoo, turned out that the other kids tease him because he plays with the girls sometimes, when the boys don’t want him to play with them.  They don’t want him to play with them because he seems to play soccer better than one of the other boys, and he seems to be the ringleader.

He then also added, that he doesn’t have Gogo Crazy Bones, so he can’t play with them.

**sigh**

After I asked him why he didn’t tell me that was a craze, he said that he’d just thought I wouldn’t buy it for him because I’ve drummed it into his head, that he’s not allowed to take toys to school.

**sigh**

So I went to buy some Gogos today.

Thing is, I would have bought them if he’d told me.  I remember the crazes at school, and how you HAD to have the same thing, or else you were shunned. I remember the issues with marbles and skipping ropes and elastics and card swapping and writing paper swapping… and this is definitely the beginning.

I started thinking about whether I was bugged about this or not.  And I realise I’m not.

Peer pressure at his age, or even Connor’s age makes me a little uncomfortable, just a little.

I don’t like the bullying part of it… like the one dude is clearly doing… and Bradley is unable to see that this child is just being mean to him when his own friendship with a common friend is threatened.

But I get it.

Even though it’s hard to me to watch him go through this, and harder for me to explain how he needs to deal with it, I do think he needs to go through it.

It’s preperation for the rest of his life.

It kills me to even think that… but bullies and peer pressure happens right throughout life.  Whomever thinks it’s restricted to schools is smoking something.  Unless we equip our kids to deal with it, they’re going to have a really rough time later on.

So, no matter how hard it is for me to handle, I must try and help him deal with it.

Being a parent is not easy.  It makes you question everything.  The system.  The environment.  And your own history.

So, the harder homework has started.  Bradley announced when he came home this evening, that his teacher told them to google sloths so that they can report back tomorrow.  Then while we were on the hunt for sloth information, he also said that they were talking about Pompeii at school and if they wanted to they could look that up too.

Bradley thoroughly enjoyed what we found, and in fact, so did Connor.  And I thought we’d share 3 of the websites that we really liked in our searches… because they ended up being fantastic for all sorts of subjects and I’ve bookmarked them for future projects!

1.  Learning about Rainforests - what a perfect site for kids to learn!! Simple information, that was easy to read with enough information for him to give a full report back tomorrow about sloths.

Pompeii ended up being a little trickier, mostly because the first sites we found were far too complex for a 7 year old to read easily.  After searching with kids in the keyword, I found these 2 sites that I thought were really awesome…

2.  Kidipede – History for Kids.  Very easy to digest information, that told us about Pliny the elder

3. Discovery Channel – just WOW!! The whole history about Pompeii is on the site, and simply written, and it has a video that narrates Pliny’s story (he’s the only guy that wrote about Pompeii fateful day).  The kids just loved it!! We even went and built our own volcano and watched it erupt online!! Very cool, and it illustrated the point so very well.

Then we went from Pompeii and looked at a few of the other things on the site, and under Explore by Subject, we found the Dinosaur channel… awwwssssumm (as Connor said)… there’s a Dinosaur viewer that shows you so much about each dino… just perfect for 2 dino mad kids!!

We’re definitely going back there to explore some more!

He gets left alone for 5 minutes, and comes up with a plan… every single time!

I got from work this evening, and he proudly showed me his new “tattoos”…

He wasn’t happy with transfers today, he got hold of stamps from somewhere in Bradley’s room, coloured them in with koki (coloured marker pen), and then stamped them all over his arms.

LOL!  Hopefully it’ll come off in the bath, Lance has no idea which type of koki was used.

And this in a week with all the strikes… which means that he’s not even going to be able to run off that energy at school because we’ve been told today that his school is closed until Monday because the primary school down the road was threatened.

Bradley has finally learnt how to tie his own shoelaces.  This particular journey has been a long and painful one for all of us… he just didn’t get it!  We eventually gave it a rest for a few months, and then last week I decided to try and show him again… within 5 minutes he did it like a pro!!

First my theory… it matters not how much you push your kids to do something.  It won’t work.  They will only be able to do it when they are ready.  He just wasn’t ready before.  The fact that he was supposed to know how to tie his laces before he got to Grade 1 is besides the point, he was unable to get it right.  Now his fingers allow him to do it. It’s like crawling… you cannot force a baby to crawl until they’re ready… it just won’t happen!

Second the results of this feat… he has gained independance of sorts.

Seriously, it’s true.  Now he wants to do sport at school again.  He’s wanting to play soccer and hockey… and the reason… he can tie his laces himself without asking anyone for help!!

It’s been a big thing in his life.  The ONLY reason he told me that he didn’t want to stay at aftercare and do sport in the afternoons was because of the laces issue.

This tiny tiny step has meant an immense change in his life and I’m so so very happy that he’s finally got it.

My mom is going away for 10 days and I’ve needed to organise transport for the boys while she’s gone, with the view that this would happen more and more often now because my parents want to travel more.  So, Beauty is going to walk to pick up Connor, because the school is about 2 blocks away…but Bradley was an issue.

So after much debate about afterschool vs transport, we’ve decided that a school transport system is the way to go for now, and we got the names of a few places from the school.

I met with the dude that we finally a. chose and b. managed to get hold of (the others didn’t even return our calls), this morning at the school.

I hope we chose right. He looks ok.  His car/van looks ok.  What he told me about his service sounds ok.

But it’s a leap of faith.  I have to trust that he’s been truthful.  I hope and pray that he was.

It’s a parenting debacle.  This trust issue is huge.  You trust that when you go back to work after maternity leave, that the person looking after your baby is trustworthy.  You trust that the school you organise for your kids is trustworthy.  And now I’m trusting that the person driving my child is trustworthy.

It’s BIG!

And the worry is not unfounded either.

This dude was telling me this morning about some of the stories he’s heard… or at least I pray he’s heard and it’s not about him. Firstly not all the parents actually meet him before they arrange transport… they do everything via email and phone… sounds a little odd to me especially when your child is 5 or 6 years old… sure you’d want to meet the person who is going to collect and deliver your precious child.   Then he told me about some of the other  services where the service is outsourced to a third party, and your child ends up being carted by a person driving a car with smooth tyres and without seat belts.

Now I had that on my mind the whole day, and then I got to my mom’s house and we were discussing this whole thing, and she told me what she’d seen that afternoon when picking up Bradley from school.  A car stopped next to her, and this lady started piling kids into her car.  It was a white VW and there were too many kids for the car, so they were all squashed on the back seat.  Then she tells the one kid to get into the boot, and tells the other kids to keep quiet until they get out of the school premises.  She piles the bags around the child so the security guard (I’m assuming here) can’t see what she’s done.. and she drives off.

Holy moly that has freaked me out!! I wish my mom had gotten the woman’s number plates because, by God, I’m going to tell Bradley’s teacher about it on Tuesday.  That cannot be allowed to happen!

I just pray that this dude I’ve organised is ok.

Every class in Bradley’s school was given a country to research this year.  Only countries taking part in the FIFA World Cup were used as part of the project. It was done to get the kids excited about the World Cup and it’s certainly worked!

Today is the day that Bradley is going to stand up, with his class mates, in front of the whole school and recite the speech that they’ve prepared about Serbia.  I’m so impressed that he’s even saying a few words in Serbian (apparently the teacher in the next class comes from a country next to Serbia).

Excuse the crap quality again… the only video camera I have is my Blackberry… and it’s shocking quality.
Then first thing Bradley said when he saw the video was “Hey, that’s not my voice, I don’t sound like that” LOL!! I think everyone feels the same way when they hear their own voice.