Parents' Own School Experiences

My wife and I had had fairly negative experiences with the education system. We'd suffered a lot with bullying. So, that was at the forefront of our concerns, is you know, "Where is he going to find himself in social circles?" And it may also be too early for those sorts of things to kind of grow and come to the front. So, we were concerned about that. And I think the way teachers teach these days, it's far more understanding than say when I was in primary school, because I didn't have a good interaction or relationship with a lot of my teachers. So I think a lot of those concerns came up, because I know teachers can get a bit stressed and they can then express some negativity towards a student and then they - that student's then feeling pretty rough about something that they've done and really it's a situation that might have been able to you know be managed a little better.

Yeah, starting school, I think I was more nervous than he was about it, mainly because of my experiences with school. I hated school um and it was very hard for me to be so positive about how great the school is, when I know that um... I know that so I hated it myself. And yeah, I was desperate for my mum to pull me out of school and desperate for home dinners and everything and be home schooled. So, it was very hard for me to say: "Yeah, school's great, you'll make loads of friends," when I had literally no friends myself and it was very hard. And I knew how hard it is for him to be sociable. So, I've taken him to all of the baby clubs and everything and forced myself to be sociable for his sake and it hasn't really worked in that he never speaks when I'm around. But yeah, he hasn't kicked up a fuss once about going to school - which is great! particularly for me, which means it must be a good school.