I did very well today

That’s what I hear, every afternoon when I pick Bubby D up from preschool.

For the last three weeks, she’s been marching off with various degrees of muted enthusiasm towards the preschool gate, generally stopping every now and then to tell me that ‘I don’t like preschool’, ‘preschool isn’t fun’, and ‘I don’t want to go to preschool’.

It is a big change. Previously she had two mornings a week at a different preschool, and two days at the private nursery that she’s been going to since she was 10 months old. So it’s not that she hasn’t experienced childcare, or doing things without me hovering over her before – but this new preschool is every morning, 5 days a week – and it’s also attached to a school so it just seems a bit more formal.

The toys are there, but they are more ordered. The other children are there, but there are more of them. And the rules have increased too – there are pegs with names, a uniform, a set schedule of how the morning will be structured.

I can see how she thinks it is not ‘fun’, at least, not in the way she’s been used to.

But I can also see, just like she says, how very well she is doing each day.

Because when I pick her up, the fear, the concern, the ‘I don’t want’ is gone and instead there is a beaming, bouncing Bubby D full of news about who her friends are, how the slide works and the face that she’s learnt to pedal, all by herself.

And this week, after three weeks of adjustment, she finally realised just how much fun she is having too.

‘I WANT to go to green preschool, Mummy’ she informed me this morning. ‘I want to go, right now!’

Luckily, that’s where we were headed.

And once again, she did very well today.