Mum, we’ve forgotten our vegetable! ” Jake tugged anxiously at my hand as we entered the school gates. Sure enough, there was the notice: “Please bring a vegetable on Wednesday. We are making vegetable soup.” On the table were bags and heaps of, chiefly, carrots. I apologised for the lack of vegetable but promised to go back and bring one directly. Mrs Miller - who job-shares with Mrs Meadows - urged against it. “What we really need,” she said, “is stock cubes.”
“Fine,” I said easily and turned to go, when I saw Jake’s face. It was about to crumple. “Um, I think Jake wants me to bring a vegetable, if that’s all right.”
“Mum can bring a stock cube, that would be really useful,” suggested Mrs Miller. The face stayed crumpled. The stock cube was Not Right. “I’ll just bring a baby parsnip, it won’t take up much space, OK, Jake?” Slowly Jake nodded. I went off to get three stock cubes and three baby parsnips.
As a rule, the children don’t cry any more. They come in in the morning and take a book which they read with a friend on the carpet. Then they answer to the register (except for You-Know-Who) and they talk about their news, or about something someone has brought in, or about the letter they are learning that day. And they can sit and work as a whole group for three-quarters of an hour, their responses shaped but not pressured by the amused encouragement of Debbie the nursery nurse and whichever teacher - Mrs Meadows or Mrs Miller - is at school that day, and then they will go and sit at a table and tongues will poke out of mouths and sleeves will be rolled up and they will work.
It seems miraculous to me, this order, when I consider the chaos which three friends can inflict on our sitting room in two hours.
But Class 2 still don’t like anything out of the ordinary. Last Friday it was their assembly, their first. Out they came, quite confidently, in a line. They sat down and played percussion instruments. Then Alan led several children on a giant hunt, culminating in a giant’s cave. I looked over at Jake. Jed - the one who spilt his lunchbox and has special needs - was cowering behind the plump and solid form of Sherry. And on the other side of Sherry there was my Jake, his face, which only a moment before was beaming fatly, now turning to stone and then crumpling. “Oh no,” I thought, “let him not cry.” But he did.
First of all Debbie tried to comfort him and he bit back the tears and knuckled his eyes. That took us into the next game. By this time Jed had recovered somewhat and was only lying slumped on Sherry while sucking his thumb. Then I looked at Jake again. Tears were flowing freely down his face. I could see he was about to wail. Debbie brought him over to me. “It’s all right,” I rocked and comforted him, “you’ve got your mummy.” The sobs eased and I directed his attention back to the assembly.
In a bright and cheery voice Mrs Miller called out children’s names. They were going to play the bean game. (Do you know this game? Runner beans run, baked beans lie down, beans on toast lie near each other, string beans hold hands, broad beans stretch out their arms. ) “Well Jake,” I encouraged in a kind of brisk optimistic tone, “do you want to go up and be a bean?” Jake raised his head and glared at me through red-rimmed rheumy eyes. “I don’t want to be a beeeeeean!” he howled.
Suddenly I could see it all. You’ve just got used to everything, all the people and the pushing and shoving and reading and writing and PE and PE bags and the lunches (said by some to be “best in the world”, a verdict which I feel would surprise even the cooks) and story time and singing time and apple time and going-home time and what do they do? They change it - and add being a bean on top.
Still, on the whole the children do not cry. They sing Happy Birthday to Jed when he is five and he (what’s this?) gives the whole class a big smile. What happened to his special needs? He doesn’t seem so needy. He seems, in his own quirky way, rather happy. I’m sure it’s because of the intense pressure for harmony and order in the class. This is not achieved without unremitting work by the teachers and Debbie, who absolutely always follow rules of “hands in the air, pencils down and tidy up”, of “no calling out and no interrupting” and of “take one bit of apple and pass it round.” I love these rules and so do the children. Because at the same time as absolutely always insisting on these rules, Mrs Meadows and Mrs Miller and Debbie are having such a laugh. They are falling about in hysterics some of the time and the rest of the time they are smiling.
I couldn’t stay for the soup-making. “How was the soup?” I asked Jake.
“I only liked the juice,” he replied, mysteriously.
“What did the others think?” “Some of them said it was delicious. It had three stock cubes, one, two, three. And we brought three parsnips. Two threes. What are two threes, Mummy?” Patience is a parent-helper in a reception class.
