11954707_10153700096248900_3595838068451703618_nI used to work in brand marketing and we’d regularly have to define and segment markets in order to know how best to flog them stuff.  We would run clever workshops where we ate Haribo and named our little clusters things like “Canny Connoisseurs” or “Natural Noras”. Flexing those dormant crazy skills, I hereby create and name the broad segments of pre-teen motherly types in order to express my awe of the school mum:

BABY MAMAS:  Lead Characteristic:  Shell Shocked.  Most likely to be: Sat in a coffee shop with a pram (looking shell shocked)

TODDLER TAMERS:  Lead Characteristic:  Harassed.  Most likely to be: Chasing  a wiley coyote in a state of hyper-vigilance or flailing arms to the sound of “I like to move it move it” or singing about some dude called skinnymarink whilst dreaming of quiet places.

SCHOOL MUMS:  Lead Characteristic: Sorted! Most likely to be: Somewhere else.

Then you have the crossovers such as the baby mama with toddler who is basically as per the toddler description because the toddler has the power to dominate most things.

But, it’s the school mum (or school mum with toddler or baby), that has always appeared to me to be the closest to having things sorted. Since entering the “market” of motherhood, it’s the school mums I’ve watched with a bit of envy, respect and intrigue.  The school mums are like the 5th formers who get their own common room and the chance to wear a different coloured cardie.

School mums know something you don’t.  They go places you don’t or at least I thought they did coz they were not where I was.  They talk about things you don’t know about like reading eggs and mathletics. They hold their heads a bit higher than the other mums.  Their clothes are cleaner, less likely to be from M&S and more likely to be tastefully accessorised.

When I arrived in KL  I was a toddler tamer (who to be fair didn’t need much taming), then I became a baby mama with toddler (but my baby was born directly into the terrible twos).  Mostly I never saw school mums, just school mums with toddlers.  They indeed had all the characteristics of the school mum that I list above. They were much less harassed by their toddlers because they knew what was coming. That one day soon, they would be a school mum 100%.  They understood what that meant.

School mums got swagger.

And so now I have become a school mum/toddler tamer. I have a foot half in the fifth form common room. I nearly have that metaphorical grey cardie but it still has the propensity to bear the stain of very real yoghurt.  I am starting to walk like John Travolta in his cuban heels (you can still find ’em) carrying a tin of paint to the beat of disco and a Bee Gees falsetto.

What is it about mothering a school kid that gives a mum an accomplished air? My theories are this:

  1. There ain’t no guilt to be had!  There is no “is this the right thing” debate.  Children have to go to school.  Whatever you do with the time when your children are in school is not a guilt based choice.  The kids gotta go to school man!  And they are going to learn stuff!  Good stuff! By clever people who went to uni to learn how to do it.  They’ll do PE and music and learn cultural things and how to be polite.  Errr YAY!
  2. It’s a community. The school is a place where twice a day, 5 times a week there is propensity for an adult conversation whilst your offspring are trapped in an inescapable and educational situation that is making them better humans.  Errrrr YAY!
  3. Things are getting interesting.  Now don’t get me wrong, I quite like singing Skinnymarink (I lurrrrrve you). I am certainly comfortable throwing shapes to “no limits” and little kids are maximum cute and squidgy.  But at school, your child is starting to do things that are interesting. I’ve been a school mum for 12 days and already I’ve created a photo collage, read the sequel to the Frog Prince (darn good!) and listened to Holly explain to me how the brain works.  I like this stuff.

Now, the established school mums out there reading this will probably thinking I’m naive and I am fully expecting that to be proved right when they ask me to bake something.  Did I say this was day 12? But for now, I’ve cracked in!  The pains of my previous blog notwithstanding, I’m up for being a school mum.  I’m UP FOR IT!  Bring me reading eggs.  Let me at Mathletics. Give me some homework teacher! This honeymoon period may be short, but for now it’s real.

Education you badass. I’m in.