I’ve tried to rein back with what I write on here about Mia. Primarily because I want her to feel safe, and never feel like her day to day life is canon fodder for my blog, but secondly because… it’s the new normal, yeah? It’s every day, it’s a moody pre-teen and me still fumbling my way through parenting (and lockdowns, and obligations, and LIFE).

Kids are hard. They’re annoying a lot of the time too, sassy little jerk. She’s a pretty cool human though, and she’s coming in to her own. She’s still a kid though.

Last week was school camp, 4 days down at Phillip Island, no technology, days packed with planned activities and forced fun…. Very not Mia. Having said that, she was pretty excited about it all.

I was excited for her too, school camp is a rite of passage, I still remember my grade 3 camp to Canberra (I kept falling asleep on the bus and then didn’t go on another camp. The year 12 overnight stay at La Trobe uni doesn’t count).

I’ll be honest though, as excited as I was, I was nervous as fuck too. Mia is very similar to me in many ways, one of which being she kinda likes staying home. Since she moved in here, she’s not stayed away from home for more than a day or two, and there has been a couple of occasions where she’s called me from her uncles, or from Karly’s, and asked to come home early.

Anyway, that’s enough exposition. She went to Phillip Island on the Tuesday. Mum had a day procedure on the Wednesday, and sure enough I get a call from Mia’s teacher. Mia wants to come home. (To be clear, I told the kid that if she wanted to come home, don’t make it Wednesday). I spoke to Mia and told her to try and take it easy and have fun and that I couldn’t get her.

I felt like an ass. The last thing I want is my kid being stuck somewhere. I needed to get mum from hospital though, so as impressive as I am, I can’t be in two places at once. (I concentrated really hard and tried to duplicate myself, but I was about three thoughts away from shitting myself).

Her teacher assured me she would be fine, and that she would check in the next day.

Thursday morning rolls around and sure enough my phone rings. Mia doesn’t feel well and wants to come home.

Mia gives me the “if you can’t be bothered driving down it’s ok, I’ll be ok, Mum”

So. I call in sick to work and recruit a Cooper shaped driving buddy.

The interesting thing in all this though was some of the comments I got from people. Some people told me to go get her. Others told me I was a saint. Some told me to leave her there and that she’d be fine.

All of those things just seemed… odd.

Did I want to drive to Phillip island? No.

Did I want to take a day off work? Well, yeah always, but still no.

Did I want to detour 30 minutes to find a toilet because I thought I was going to pee myself and then regretted it because if I didn’t detour I would have found a toilet much sooner? No. (Shout out to Cooper though, 20 minutes into to the detour i told her that I wasn’t going to make it and that I was actually going to piss my pants, she didn’t comment and without missing a beat she opened the glove box, grabbed a bunch of napkins and took the lid off her empty coffee cup. I made it to a bathroom though but as always Coop had my back).

Anyway I digress.

If my kid is miserable I am always going to do whatever the fuck I can to try and make it better.

Forcing her to stay at camp isn’t “character building”. She has had enough fucking character building for one life.

My entire job is to support her and to help shape her into some kind of functioning human. As an adult do you know what I do when I don’t want to be in a situation? I fucking leave that situation. If she is feeling sick, upset, sad, whatever and she wants to be home, I’ll do whatever the heck I can to make it happen.

Is that the wrong move? Maybe? I’m not psychic (I did concentrate really hard once and… never mind).

I know that in 10 years time I’d rather her have the memory of me picking her up early than the one where I leave her there.

There will be enough moments in her life where I can’t make it better, where I can’t protect her, so in the moments I can, I fucking will.

Be excellent and have the day you deserve.

Tan

(Final side note, of the 4 girls in Mia’s rooms, one came home early, one vomited all over the bed and another had to go to hospital. Cursed trip or what?)