I’m finding something a bit odd happening, as my children start their journeys through the school system.  All these memories of my own school days are starting to come back!

I’ve found myself thinking about all the different things I learnt, and how much of it has actually been of any real use in adult life.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much I’ve used quite a large amount of what I studied at school.  Although some things are coming back to me and coming in handy as Rhys is starting to ask questions about maths and biology and the world around him.

So maybe we just learn things in school so that we can then help our children learn about them when they go to school!

Maybe school is just preparing us for when we become parents and have to teach our children things.

Which got me thinking.  About school, and then about French lessons in particular, as that’s one subject I’ve actually made a fair bit of use of out in the real world.  All of which led me to this.

3 ways school French lessons prepare you for parenthood.

1. You get used to pretending you understand what someone is saying to you.

I shouldn’t admit this really, seeing as my mum was a French teacher for years, but there were definitely times at school when I would act as if I knew what was being said to the class.  All that smiling and nodding was great practice for having a toddler who likes to jabber scribble at you and expects you to respond in some way, even when you have no idea what they’re trying to tell you!

2. You learn to tell white lies.

Remember in school you would go round the class and say, in French, what you had done at the weekend?  Well I would have won wimbledon if I actually played tennis as much as I said I did back then!  Come on, I can’t be the only one who relied on “j’ai joué au tennis” pretty much every week.

All of this lying though, was just preparing us for having children.  Who hasn’t lied at least once to their children about the ice cream van playing music when they’re run out of ice cream, or you know, Father Christmas and the tooth fairy!

 3. You master role play skills.

All those hours spent in pairs at school, pretending to be customers and shop keepers.  Buying imaginary train tickets and asking for directions to the library.  It wasn’t in vain!  It was training for the hours and hours and hours you would spend with your toddler.  Pretending to be customers and shop keepers.

There you go, three really useful skills you didn’t even realise you were learning at school!  And I’ve not even mentioned the fact that it can be really handy to be able to speak another language when you want to discuss things in front of your children that you don’t want them to know about!

I try my best to be open and honest with my children.

There’s been a lot of questions from them about babies recently, as one of their Auntie’s is pregnant and Rhys’ teacher has just had a baby girl.

I made the decision to be as honest as I could in my answers.  I didn’t want to make up stories about storks, or let my children go around thinking that babies come out of women’s tummy buttons.

So I told them the truth.  I keep things as simple as I could, and tried to use appropriate terms, but I told them the truth.

And they were happy with that.

I’m sure there’ll be more questions on the matter as they get older and that’s fine.  I’ll be honest then too.

The problem for me is when they ask questions that I just don’t have the answers to.

We’ve encountered this a fair bit recently, as Rhys has started asking questions about death.

A few months ago his friend’s dog passed away.  And in a strange coincidence he asked his Nana that day where their neighbour was, because he hadn’t seen him for a while.  Not knowing about the friend’s dog, Nana told the truth.  Their neighbour had died.

And Rhys just started crying, and didn’t really stop until he came back home.  I think it was too much for him to process.

And it’s been playing on his mind ever since.

He’ll go quiet on the topic for a while, then he’ll start asking questions again.

He wants to know what happens when we die.

And the problem is, I don’t know the answer to that question.

I’ve tried to explain that no one really knows what happens, but that different people believe different things.  It’s hard though, when I’m not even sure what I believe.  I’m not religious, so I’m not sure about introducing the idea of heaven to my children.  But I don’t want to scare them by telling them that death is the absolute end.

I don’t think Rhys would be happy with just being told that you live on in people’s memories.  He wants more than that.  I think the idea of everything just ending would be really upsetting to him.

After lots of discussions I’ve worked out that the main concern Rhys has is that he won’t be with me and his daddy any more if he dies.  At one point he asked, in his 5 year old way, about reincarnation.  He wanted to know if he was born again as a different person, would I still be his Mummy.

And it broke me a bit.  This little boy.  All he wants is his mummy.  He’s too young to be trying to deal with these huge, unanswerable questions.

So I suppose, for now, I won’t worry too much about trying to answer them for him.

For now I’ll give him what he needs.  

Reassurance that he’ll always be my son.  I will always, always be his mummy.  And he will always be loved.