Our Twins Start Junior School Today: The Childhood Innocence Will Slowly Disappear

Today my seven year old twin girls start junior school. It’s scary where the time has gone. It genuinely doesn’t seem like yesterday that we were dropping them off at nursery for the first time and there was tears all around, mostly from their mum and me, but here we are. We will be leaving them at the school gate to walk onto the playground by themselves. The only comfort I have is they have each other and there is no doubt even as twins they do disagree and argue at times, I know they will always be there to support each other. Watching the twin bond and how incredibly strong it is leaves me in awe at times.

So what will change once the girls go to junior school? There is no doubt that their learning in the classroom will start to accelerate and will definitely become more intense gradually over the next four years. Of course this will be in preparation for high school, but another part of education will also start to have a bearing on their development and growth, and that’s the education on the playground because up until now the only people during playtimes on a playground were up to 7 years of age. Now they will be standing and walking passed 11 year old children having conversations that change the way they think about many parts of life. Here are few things that will feel like a bombshell has been dropped upon them.

1. Myths (Father Christmas, Easter Bunny etc)

Up until now there has been very little chance of the girls finding out that Father Christmas or many other myths such as the tooth fairy weren’t anything but true because all the children they mixed with believed it too. Take Father Christmas as an example. There is every likelihood that with Christmas looming they will walk passed some year 6 pupils discussing Christmas and it’s quite likely that they will overhear them saying Father Christmas is not real. This is not a conversation I’m looking forward to because do we destroy the magic of Christmas for them and say yes it’s true, there is no Father Christmas or do we try to keep the belief alive? I’m really not sure how I’m going to deal with that!

2. The Use Of Swear Words

I’m not naive and there is no doubt that year 5 and 6 will use swear words. I have heard it often enough at the park when I have taken the girls to our local park and there is no doubt those same kids will swear on the playground and the girls will hear words that they will never have heard before. It will be tough explaining that ok, yes I know other children use those words but that doesn’t you should. We have never really used swear words in front of the girls. There’s no particular reason, it is just the way it has been. In all honesty I’m dreading the moment one of them uses a swear word in front of us, because it will be start of their childhood innocence disappearing forever.

3. Technology (mobile phones)

Now I’m pretty sure that I will be safe in year 3 and 4 that hopefully they won’t asking for mobile phones, but saying that the fact that kids are getting mobile phones younger and younger nowadays it’s hard to say.

The one certainty is that by year 5 they will be mixing with more and more children and a greater percentage of those year groups have smart phones. The pressure will be applied to us as parents to get them smart phones. This is such a difficult line to walk because you don’t want them to be the last kids to have a mobile phone, but at the same time you don’t want them to have them to young and they become slaves to the smart phone, constantly checking it and of course then the pressure of social media accounts which they are far too young to have. This will be peer pressure at its worst because their friends have them so why can’t they! Not a battle I am looking forward to. Hopefully it’s a couple of years away yet.

That is just a few things that are going to change in our twin girls lives. The innocence of children once they get into junior school is slowly eroded and magic that childhood innocence brings to your life will disappear whether it’s their faces that light up on Christmas morning, because they believe that Santa has been in the middle of the night, or when they meet Disney characters and you only have to look at them and they believe that the Tooth Fairy actually takes away the tooth and leaves money.

Over the next few years the girls are going to change and grow up and the playground education they will have will be a tough challenge. That I’m sure of, but I will never let on that Father Christmas is not real and of course Disney is real you just have to believe and the magic will always be there, I do! The childhood innocence is much too short nowadays let’s keep it alive as long as we can.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, how did you feel when your children went to junior school?