You probably shouldn’t let your child watch ‘Matilda’ just before they begin school

On Saturday I had some sort of gastro. I wasn’t well at all. Consequently JJ had to pretty much fend for himself while I lay comatose in a horizontal position as I couldn’t sit up. I just had to get up and get him food every now and again.

He watched more videos than normal this day, including the beginning of a movie on television  – Matilda, a story by Roald Dahl.

For those not familiar with the story, Matilda is a very clever little girl who learns she has some special powers. Her family are really comically atrocious. Her dad buys old cars, does them up really cheaply and really badly and sells them for a profit. Her mum just plays bingo and her brother is his mum and dad’s clone.

Matilda starts school and, as everything else in the story, situations and characters are exaggerated. Miss Trunchbull, the headmistress is abominable and in the real world she would never get away with throwing kids across the school yard, or swinging them by their pigtails and letting them go like a discus.

About half an hour or so into the movie as Miss Trunchbull was really gathering momentum with her fierceness, I looked over at JJ hunched up in a chair. I asked him if he was okay and he said he was really scared.

I immediately turned off the tv and told him that it was make believe and that his school will be nothing like that.

In retrospect, knowing the story of Matilda I shouldn’t have let him watch it. He’s already expressed a concern about starting school. He told me the other day that he wants to stay in childcare and not go to school. He’s also recently told me that he wants to start school at the same time as his mate who’s going to the same school, but not until a term later.

When I was telling a friend about his concerns she said to really familiarise him with his new environment before he starts so that when he does start it won’t be so scary. He’s been at the same childcare for nearly three years now and he’s one of the oldest kids there and so, like most of us, he doesn’t want to change something that’s familiar and nice.

I hadn’t really thought about it before but my friend is absolutely correct. I’ll speak to the school to see what they offer with regards to transition from kindergarten/childcare to primary school and perhaps we’ll start riding the bike over there again so I can say things like, ‘This is where you’ll play at lunchtime,’ ‘This is where you’ll go to the toilet,’ etc etc.

Actually, I’ll be the one who’s a dribbling mess on that first day and I’ll be the one who needs consoling.