My daughter isn't great at maths

This evening my daughter lay beside me in bed, her small body turned inward, as if she could fold herself away from tomorrow.

Bedtime always has a way of loosening the reigns of the day, the requests come first – one more glass of water, one last book — not even from the doorway because she still goes down with us first. And then it’s the quiet admissions, the things dusk pulls up to the surface, and maybe one more glass of water.

“Mummy?” My 7 year old asks, her voice on a tightrope. “I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow”.

Shit.

School holidays often turns me into a snack dispensing, time losing, mildly useless but constantly needed background character in my own life. So my default response would have been, “well, you’re going”. But something about this time told me there was more to it. Something told me this wasn’t a, ‘but I’m so thirsty’, kind of night.

She usually loves school — the garden-to-table projects, the library visits, the rotating class mascot that comes home each week. My mind immediately went to friendships, because this is the age where girlhood can also be mean, where being left out is giggled over and insecurities are invented for you by someone else. I remember.

And then she said it:

“I’m the worst in my class at maths”

I was immediately transported back to when my father used to stand me next to my brother and fire maths questions at us like a quiz show. I too, was no good at maths and my brother was naturally gifted at it