It’s non-stop WhatsApp messaging – do these mums not work?

Lola is starting primary school and Liberty is starting nursery – on the same day and the same time but different locations. Will Charlotte Cripps survive life at the school gates?

Everybody laughs, but don’t they realise the deeper implications of what she is saying? (Illustration by Amara May)

My two-year-old has started saying “God almighty I can’t cope.” It’s a hell of a lot for Liberty to have picked it up as a new catchphrase but I can’t stop her, which is rather embarrassing especially when she starts shouting it during the leavers’ picnic at Lola’s nursery school.

Everybody laughs, but don’t they realise the deeper implications of what she is saying? It’s about my mental state, which is not tip-top at the moment. I’m gearing myself up for Lola’s first day at big school and Liberty’s first day at nursery – both at 9am on the same Monday – at different locations. It’s meant to be a milestone but it feels like a millstone around my neck.

When I start hyperventilating at the thought of being forced to choose between my children, I have to take a deep breath. “Calm down!” I say to myself. “You've lost all perspective.” It's not like I'm being asked to choose which one I would save in a fire, just who emotionally needs me the most that day.

How do all the other mums manage to look so relaxed? We are settling on to rugs having brought our own picnics to the nursery school garden for the send-off.

One of the mums has even dressed her daughter, Sacha, in her new beret for her private school – it’s French blue with a logo. It seems a bit showy. Why would any parent do that when the rest of us are sending our kids to state schools? It feels like a vulgar statement but I hear a voice in my head saying “compare to despair” – it’s an AA slogan. Maybe her lovely daughter just liked her new beret? And what’s wrong with that?

I kept looking at the front door expecting to see Angelina Jolie or Madonna walk in but nobody famous turned up

She’s the yummy mummy who told me that a Hollywood A-lister was attending Elixir’s birthday party but if I saw her there, please could I keep it to myself. What did she think I would do? Call the Daily Mail?

I kept looking at the front door expecting to see Angelina Jolie or Madonna walk in but nobody famous turned up – only a zoo-keeper with a menagerie of animals including a rabbit, a snake, and a horrendous tarantula. I have to say it was still a great party.

But will my experience at Lola’s primary school be any less challenging?  

The dreaded preschool WhatsApp group messaging has started weeks before Lola's term begins. It’s a bank holiday Monday at 8am and one mum is already suggesting her new class meet up in Holland Park.

I notice the mother I nearly had a punch-up with at the Sunday school is organising sandwiches for all the children. She’s the one who told me it was disgusting that parents would go to church merely to get into a good primary school.

Is she oblivious to the fact that most of the parents attending the picnic have done exactly that? We may all have grown to like the sense of community the church offers, but it’s no secret that a newfound zeal for attending church was motivated by the idea of a fabulous non-fee-paying school.

I haven’t even reached the school gates yet and the non-stop WhatsApp messaging has begun: do these mums not work? Has lockdown impacted them so much they feel a need to connect 24/7? Twenty-plus messages are about cardigans or gym bags in just one morning.

“Personally I’m boycotting the overpriced and slightly exploitative school uniform website and bought the branded bits second-hand,” says one mum. 

Suddenly photos of children I’ve never met pop up on a beach. It seems they can afford holidays abroad, so why are they grumbling all day about the lack of second-hand uniform sales?

“You’re going to come back all sun-kissed and feeling fabulous,” another mum replies.

I wish I could delete myself from the WhatsApp group but it might look rude.

I decide to try on Lola’s uniform before she starts but realise the size 4 is not a size 4, but more like something that fits a two-year-old. So I pick up my phone to WhatsApp the other mums for advice. 

If you can't beat them, join them!