Well it’s been an intense few days!

The heat has left us all knackered and hot and sweaty and grumpy, struggling to sleep and overall pretty tired. I caught A’s cold so that’s not helping either.

We have been setting up letterbox contact for S, which is a managed process via social services where we can write a letter and send up to 4 photos, once a year, to her birth parents and siblings. We have no idea if they will write back or not yet… S was really keen to do this and excited to be able to make contact with her siblings again, but doing it also stirred up a lot of really big emotions for her, and it was quite an upsetting process. We ended up doing her letters on Sunday night, it was so hot that A wouldn’t go to sleep and S was really upset and missing her birth family and so it was a fairly tough night all round. No-one got much sleep and it was quite a tense night in the house!

I don’t know if there is a word for school-related admin so I’m going with Schoolmin.

At this moment, I have one child at Primary school across town, who will be starting a new Secondary school in September, and another child about to start at a different Primary school nearer to my house in September.

I don’t think I could adequately explain the volume of admin involved – there are THREE separate apps I have to download for parent communications because for some reason each school uses a different app; and there are also THREE different school-based payment platforms for meals and trips etc that I need to sign up to and get passwords and logins for; and then there are the 49 different forms to sign regarding the child’s medical history, Dr’s contact info, allergy info, school meal info, registration forms, pupil premium forms, etc; and the 57,000 letters and emails and messages flying about informing me about transition plans, and end of term activities, and SATs and homework and revision, and tours of the schools, and meet the teachers, and settling-in days for both kids at different schools, and requests to volunteer on the PTA, and requests to bake things for the bake sale, and to help out at the school disco, and reminders to be present and correct at any school engagements like parent assemblies and football matches, and pacts to sign swearing I will bring my child to school on time, in uniform and won’t take them out for holidays during term time on pain of death.

It’s pretty full on.

I have to remind myself that I’m a single mum with two kids and I’m not an evil monster if I don’t have the time or energy to be on the PTA or bake shit for the bake sales that apparently happen EVERY WEEK. Usually I love to join in and be involved but this is a CRAZY amount of admin and emails and communications. Obviously I’m terrified I’ll miss something important as I’ve never done this before, but JESUS CHRIST it’s a lot to take in!

It doesn’t help that A’s new primary school has a terrible website with no useful information (the “Parent Information” page is literally blank), and their transition page talks about a lovely slow transition with lots of visits and half-days for them to adjust to Reception and build up to doing full days etc, but the letter they have sent out to parents just basically says “We will visit you at home on XXX day and then they start full time on xx September” and that’s it. So I am wading through it all to try and figure out what is actually happening and hoping it will become clear