Dawdling

School run at a snail's pace

You know those notes that keep turning up in the school bag? The ones that remind you to have your child at school before the bell?  We get them a lot. They come in many, bright colours - so that they get noticed and read.

"Dear Parent, please ensure your child arrives promptly for a  9:10am start. 

Late arrivals are not only a disruption for the child involved, but the whole class is also disturbed as they wait for instructions to be repeated..." And so it goes on, generally for another paragraph. 

So these notes are working on the assumption that it's the parents who are tardy, disorganised, late sleepers.  

<Clearing of throat> 

I beg to differ.

I don’t know about you, but I have a child who could win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the slowest consumed slice of toast. Forty five minutes remains her record; thirty minutes is the norm as she says "I'm full!" halfway through.  Ok it is thick cut raisin toast topped with mashed banana but seriously; just two corners? That's it? And that took half an hour?

I have to nag and nag and nag...

Can you PLEASE hurry up? You're moving like a SNAIL!

‘Put your shoes on!' proceeded by the mandatory 10min follow-up: 'why aren’t your shoes on your feet yet?'

Any my old favourite; 'Brush your teeth!; that toothbrush only works if it's in your mouth and moving!'

Four years with a mouthfull of choppers you'd think she'd grasped the concept by now.  

Nope, she still thinks that wandering around the bathroom waving her brush around in the air, like a frenetic conductor at the tail end of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, is actually doing anything but driving her mum nuts.

I’ve even stooped to tacking ‘I am BEGGING you!’ on to the end of my repeated requests. So I told her this morning about the notes. And how parents get the blame for their kids being late.

She was mortified: ‘ YOU get in trouble when I dawdle?!’  

She takes school notes more seriously than Moses took the Ten Commandments.

So running now for the school gate, she shouts me a promise over the booming peal of  the school bell;
‘I promise to try not to dawdle anymore mummy.’

I know my little angel sincerely means this, but she’s seven…

I won’t hold my breath.

the rugrat's snail rodeo