It’s time to say bye-bye to late mornings and welcome the busy ones with screaming alarms, whistling cookers, cluttering utensils, honking van drivers and yelling wake up calls saying ‘Get up! It’s time for school!’ For whom: children or parents? Both!
On Monday, after an exhaustive vacation, the school children were excited to relive those relishing moments with the scent of new books, donning freshly pressed uniforms, carrying a new bag, anxiety to know new friends and teachers. This excitement, short-lived though, happens every year and is every school kid’s dream.
But reopening of schools are not just about the kids but also for parents. It is a big change in schedule for mothers, who lose an extra hour of sleep to get back to the routine of another academic year of their children – wake up very early, pack the bags and take their kids to school and energetically wave at them.
This was evident when Pushpalatha, a mother of a four-year-old Akshaya, was adjusting her child’s uniform before letting her enter the school for the first time.
The joy she felt when she saw her child in a school uniform was enough for her to bare any workloads. “I woke up very early today and went to the temple to pray for my daughter for a good start in her life, I want her to achieve big. I am ready to do anything for her happiness,” she said.
When a child’s world is all about books, studies, friends, tuitions and teachers; a parent’s world is filled with school fees, tuition fees, bus fare and auto fares.
“Every year, the school keeps increasing the fees. For a middle-class family, all these are major challenges. Yet, we spend, for our child’s good future,’ says Ganesan, the father of two girls studying in Manuelmony Matriculation School, Thiruvanmiyur.
Though parents are already burdened with their routine, they also make sure that their children’s needs are attended to. The heavily crowded premises of Sri Sankara Vidyashramam School in Thiruvanmayur, was a perfect example. The school was crowded with parents waiting to pay the fees, and receive the chalan for books in the office room, creating a traffic blockade outside the school. Many mothers had even packed their lunch to wait till afternoon to get the books of their children.
The children might have innumerable expectations for their next year, but these caring parents have just one objective and one expectation every year— to be a good parent by providing whatever best they could and equip their kid to achieve their goals.