Dear LPG, 

I hope that you will be able to post this message during the first week of September when all those grandparents who do the school run so that their children can avoid the childminding fees and still get to work on time, will be saying goodbye to those morning lie-ins.  I have a little story to tell which might well resonate with a few of my fellow readers. I suspect many a mum of the yesteryear’s will be having their own private personal day of acknowledgement one day this week.

I now take my grandchildren to school and, getting them there on those autumn mornings reminded me of those days when I used to find myself in the playground at nine in the morning with their parents. The only difference is that this time round my responsibilities end when they are taken in by the teachers.   I have been doing the primary school run for a couple of years, but it’s all changed this year.

While I was standing in the playground with all those little infants, nostalgia kicked in, one day just before the end of the summer term.  My thoughts turned to my grandson, who is 11 and changing schools this September which means that he will soon have to go to school on his own for the first time.  That thought reminded me of when his mother reached that stage in her education.  I remember having serious nightmares about how she would get to school alone.  After all, you can only be at one school gate at a time, and they feel so grown up by then that they really don’t want parents seeing them to the door anymore.

All that time ago, the secondary school we chose was two whole miles away and she would have to get there unaccompanied.

I had a strategy though.  We had the six weeks’ holiday to prepare, and I had a serious plan in place.  During the first two weeks of the summer holidays, we travelled to and from the school gates a few times by train, then there was our week’s holiday, followed by a week’s revision before the ultimate test.  The big day came when I left my little one, and her even littler brother, at our local train station while I did the fastest drive to the other end that I could.   It was only a couple of stops for them, but I must have driven like a woman possessed because I got to the other end of the journey quite a while before they did.

The memory got me thinking that in these days of 20 mph driving and much longer distances between home and the new school, I would easily have ended up with a speeding fine if I did all that now.  I know that the limits are there to protect the little ones but, with so many more cars on the road this year, the parents of this year’s brood of 11-year-olds will be worrying a lot more than I did on the first day of my eldest’s 11th autumn term.

But no matter how old you get; parents never really stop worrying.  Now I even find myself worrying about my eldest’s eldest!

SG, Lewisham.