I was late enrolling my son for school next year.
He starts Prep (that’s Victorian-speak for Kindergarten) at our local primary school next year; we slipped the paperwork in, just in time. Although, having said that, I was completely prepared to take the poor kid on the first day of school next year and basically stage a sit-in until they put him in a classroom.
I was talking to a girlfriend of mine about it a few weeks ago. She’s very organised, in a way I’ll never achieve. She was horrified that we had left it so late.
And she was also horrified that we hadn’t visited the school first, nor had we visited or investigated any other schools. She asked me, ‘what if the school isn’t right for him? What if he needs a different environment? What if, what if, what if?’ We talked at cross purposes for half an hour. I genuinely didn’t understand what she meant.
It's up to him to adapt to the environment he finds himself in. Because that's life. You don't get the red carpet rolled out for you in adulthood. You'll find yourself in all sorts of situations that don't necessarily 100 percent suit you; and you learn to adapt and find your way through.
She's one of my dearest friends, and I adore her. But we have a very different outlook on life, and a very different outlook on parenting.
My approach is that my kids will only get certain opportunities in the world, the kinds of opportunities that most kids get, but that it's up to my kids to make the most of them. I'll help and nurture my kids as much as I can, but I'm not going to deliberately set out to give them special opportunities, exclusive opportunities.