Is there anything – anything – more likely to give you a gut-punch of a sinking feeling than your child dashing proudly out of school clutching a bedraggled cuddly toy and shouting, “I’ve got the class bear”?
No, no there is not. Believe me, for I’ve been there. Twice. If you’ve been there too, you’ll understand my horror, particularly when responsibility for said bear (as if that wasn’t excruciating enough) also comes with the pressure of filling out a weekend-long ‘photo diary’, to be read by every other parent in the class when it’s their turn.
The struggle is real, folks. And I was reminded of such struggle when I heard about one class bear who was recently misplaced on a visit to Buckingham Palace by the five-year-old Savannah Hart. Luckily, the youngster from Woodside Kindergarten in Adelaide, managed to get Harriet the monkey back (accompanied by a brand new toy, Rex the corgi) – after it got the royal treatment.
Harriet was pictured eating a scone in palace grounds and being held by a line-up of Palace staff beaming proudly and clutching the monkey to their chests. A Royal Collection Trust spokesperson said that in giving Harriet – and, by default, Savannah – the royal treatment, they wanted to provide a “memorable experience”. (Plus, a great spread in that photo diary, right?)
If you’re a parent, grandparent, or carer for school or nursery-aged children, you’ll probably be feeling exactly the same as me at this point: absolute, horrific sympathy for the other parents in Savannah’s class. Who can ever match up to that?
You can’t, can you? You simply cannot beat the family whose photo diary includes pictures of little Harriet romping around the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
When my daughter started in Reception – before I’d even heard of such a thing as class bears (oh, those hallowed days of ignorance) – we were the first family to take it home. It wasn’t even a bear, but a rabbit called Dude, and I had no idea what I was doing.
I also had a newborn baby, and was struggling to get dressed and ready for the school run each day, let alone thinking of zany activities to do with Dude, to then document in a neatly presented double-page spread.
But being first to have him in temporary foster-care, I had to set a standard – and the pressure was sky-high.
So, we took Dude for sushi. We took him on the Tube, to the swings at the local park, and to Southbank for that “dash of culture”. But I worried that we weren’t doing enough – that taking Dude to visit my parents wasn’t exciting enough, somehow. That it would, in some way, reveal me to be a mother who wasn’t quite measuring up.
So, I sat down and, like a drill sergeant, got my poor daughter to write out a sentence to accompany each photo of Dude – even though she could barely write her own name at that point. Predictably, it took forever. And there were tears.
The next year, though, I was canny to it. I relaxed. ‘Leo the Lion’ didn’t get a trip up to town. He didn’t show off his cultural creds by going to the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. And he certainly didn’t get to meet The Queen.
He went to the local park, had a picnic, and loved it. Well, I assume he did. He certainly wasn’t complaining.