‘If your child has just turned 4 years old, is it pathetic to send him to after-school care after school?’

My sons are rather tired: the beginning of the primary school era. Every night at half past six they grab their own rabbit and want to go to bed. Oh.

Just turned four years old and then all those impressions: it is a completely new phase for my boys. Every night before going to sleep they ask me, “Mommy, are we going to see Miss Lily tomorrow?”. But we’ll never go to that sweet teacher Lily from the nursery again. And to their best friend Jaap. They understand it but also think it’s a bit crazy.

They are doing very well, those little men, the smallest in the class. My mother’s heart melts when I take them away and see them sitting in the circle. So good, sometimes on Miss’s lap. A pout to keep it up because yes, it is exciting when mom leaves. And then suddenly that e-mail arrived: there is a place for Bodi and Daaf at the BSO. And every working mother knows: those places are scarce, so you have to grab them right away. But I’m having a hard time with it.

It’s already a big transition. They have just started for two weeks and now I pick them up myself at 2.30 am. Around three o’clock my boys fall asleep on the couch: they can’t anymore. Exhausted from all the new things they experience. And then I have to send them to a BSO from school?

Are children just four years old simply too young for both primary school and an afternoon of play at the after-school care? When they are 4.5 or 5 years old, it’s just fun, spending an afternoon with their friends. But now… Doesn’t feel right somewhere. How do other mothers of children who are just starting school do this? Sometimes you can’t do anything else in terms of work, but if you can arrange it, wouldn’t you rather pick them up yourself for the first few months so they can go home after school? So that they have the peace to process everything that happens at school? Or is this also part of the age-of-my-children-grow-up?

It just gives me a stomach ache. If only they could go back to Miss Lily for a day – if only for Mum.

Tessa Heinhuis (33) is the mother of Bodi and Daaf (4) and pregnant with the third. She is editor-in-chief of Mama Magazine and lives in Bussum.

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