School Drop Off

Now I know that many of you are parents with school age kids and you totally get school drop offs. Everyone will have their own stresses and for me it's all about getting boys out of the house, finding a car park, and basically navigating your way through the arriving and departing cars (usually big 4WD - guilty) and the little people crossing roads. For us school pickups are worse than drop offs for car parks, however the school dropoffs are worse for an air of stress that seems to permeate. I've seen this at school and I've seen this at pre-schools. This is my summary of what happens. First of all you're in a frenzy to do all the before school stuff, which in our house is homework, lunches, jobs, uniform on, socks and shoes on, sunblock on, teeth cleaned...etc etc, as well as the normal house jobs I try to sneak in before we leave. Then it's the focused drive to school or kindy, and the manic rush in where you attempt a quick hi to the teachers while you are simulataneously putting bags in lockers, lunch stuff in fridges, watching the clock and mentally calculating if you're going to make it in time to school. I especially see this at Smith's kindy where for many parents this dropoff signals a "child free day" usually evidenced by gym gear. There is like a mad rush to get your child gone so you have as many child free minutes as possible. Right or wrong, and deny it as much as you want, this for most is the reality.
So one morning, having dropped 2 children in 2 different places, I was onto child number 3's dropoff, I pulled up and Rafe got out of the car and we were doing our normal sun block application outside the school. Suddenly a mother came rushing back to the car behind us, screaming at her toddler to "GET IN THE CAR", the little girl was playing around a bit inside the car and this brought on more frenzy for the mother who was trying to do up the car seat. She then leaped in, did a tight and dangerous 3 point turn in her big 4WD in our busy school street and accelerated off.
She had her gym gear on and my guess was her class was about to start.
Rafe and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows while I took just that extra minute longer to calmly and lovingly put his sun block on and give him a slow hug before he wandered to his class. Happily.
Sometimes you need to see what you look like to realise what changes you need to make.