Parents of a School Girl - working on perfecting our daily Tasks!

I already told you that Apra started going to a school in Mathura in July and that this has changed our lives once more. Yes, ours, not only Apra’s – because we are now parents of a school girl which is a fully new dimension of parenting!

I would not have thought that sending your child to school would involve so many extra tasks! Well, the first thing is that there has to be a regular rhythm of bringing her to bed and waking her up now. As we have anyway changed our lifestyle with the opening of the restaurant however, it was not difficult to implement that, too – and while bringing her to bed it mostly Ramona’s task, I am the one waking our little angel up in the mornings. I am not sure which task is the more difficult one! 🙂

We are not only responsible for sending her to school, though! At the time of her admission, we got some papers with instructions and we are doing our best to follow them – but as first-time school-child parents, I know we are still working on the details!

Obviously, there is a dress code. For normal days, this means school uniform, which is quite nice as we don’t have to think about what to dress her in. There are however also ‘Fun Fridays’ – on each Friday, the children of Apra’s class can come in regular clothing. That clothing should however fit to the ‘Colour of the Month’, which is yellow for September for example. At least a small part of what she is wearing should be yellow!

Oh yes, and Fun Fridays also means that you can bring ‘Fun Food’. That is an exception to the normal rule of giving her only healthy food in her lunchbox. Ramona had her own struggle with that, as ‘healthy’ for a regular Indian family may very well include deep-fried potatoes – but not pasta with vegetables! Well, we found a good average with parantha and vegetables!

Of course there are more special days like the 15th August, India’s Independence Day, on which you should send your child in traditional clothing, days on which the kids do arts and crafts and you have to send plain flutes, glitter, decorative bands and more.

Then there are ‘PTMs’, which are ‘Parents-Teacher-Meetings’. We had our first one this month – because we forgot to go to the one in August. So we arrive there, Ramona and I, thinking that we will go and talk to the teacher about Apra and leave. But oh, there was an exhibition of what the classes had produced in artwork over the past month and all kids were there and playing and proudly showing their parents everything… well, next time we will bring Apra as well! 😀

As I said, we are working on the details and we are confident that we will improve our parenting-school-skills over the next weeks and months!