Community Relationships

And that brings back a lot of sort of past memories for me with school and you know feeling a little bit isolated and a bit anxious and I've really tried to not put him in that situation. So, I've been calling round different mums and saying: "Is so-and-so going to holiday club and can he go with them?" And luckily, it's all worked out, but yeah that's been another sort of thing that I've had to be wary of, and I know that's going to be another sort of thing that I need to think about in the future as well.

It's just amazing how different everything is cause as soon as he started, we started getting all these party invites to people's birthdays and it's crazy just having to fit everything in and find out what everybody likes and, but the nice thing is - because where he is in a small school, there's only 15 in his class, so everybody's really kind and they all look after each other and look out for each other and the parents so are the same with each other as well, so it's quite nice in that respect.

I don't really have a frame of reference, all schools might be like this, but this school really does try to engage the parents as much as it can. So, it does feel like I'm part of a community now, like I've got more friends because of all I'm now friends with all the parents, whenever I reasonably can I get involved with the things that the school puts on. So, there's a… a little wood in the back of the school where, it's basically a big muddy puddle with some trees in it and they take the kids there every Wednesday afternoon and I've managed to help out with that once or twice, which is lovely! And so, all the kids know me as his Dad, they say, "Excuse me, can you do this?" and it's very cute.