“I can take the bus to school tomorrow, Mum!” Dancing Wombat told me on Friday morning.
“But aren’t you going to help at the school tuck shop?” I queried. “You can go by yourself again – like you did last week.”
As you’ll know from Dancing Wombat’s latest blogs, last Friday was the culmination of some weeks of travel training – a series of practice runs and the first independent journey. We wanted Dancing Wombat to gain the ability and the confidence to travel independently on public transport to the school where her class was helping in the tuck shop. With three weeks of term remaining, I had been looking forward to her building on last week’s success.
“We’re not going to the tuck shop tomorrow,” she told me. “There are school sports.”
I was confused. “But you had school sports last term. Is this something different?”
“It’s only for some of the students. Not for me.”
Oh. I considered for a minute. It was probably some inter-school sports event that the more sporty students were attending. Sport doesn’t feature highly in Dancing Wombat’s list of favourite things to do. I could relate to that. While I quite enjoy exercise now, at school I always tried to schedule my music lessons when sport was on!
“Okay, fine. Thanks for telling me. At least you get to go on the bus today.” She enjoyed going on the bus. “There’s always next week.”
“No, we’re not going next week.” No? I had thought this tuckshop work experience unit was going for the whole term.
“Oh. What about the week after?”
“No. We’re not going back.”
Ohhhhhh. This was the first that I’d heard of it. The school had communicated nothing about this. It was just as well she’d told me, because otherwise I would have happily sent her off on the tram and she would have arrived at the school tuck shop, only to find it deserted. Dancing Wombat can be very organised with some things, however, communication is not her strong point. I gave thanks that she had communicated this time, when it really mattered.
If you’ve read about Dancing Wombat’s travel training you will know that the gradual approach gave way to some intensive practice, as I needed to be on the other side of town at 9.00, when she needed to be arriving at the tuck shop.
I’d been a little concerned that I was artificially speeding up the process and perhaps pushing her to be independent a couple of weeks earlier than I would otherwise have done. And yet now, it transpired, last Friday was actually the last opportunity for her to travel independently.
I was doubly glad that we had encouraged, pushed and supported her in doing this. She’s still on a high from her achievement, and keen to pursue further “travel training” opportunities.
So what’s my take-home lesson? Probably something that we’re all aware of, but mightn’t always follow up: make the most of the every opportunity we can, because it might end up being be the only one we have.
Happy Wombatting!
