I'M ONLY LITTLE

This holiday club is wonderful. It's full of fun teachers with plenty of ideas for talent shows and alien escapades. It just is all a bit full on for youngsters.

Last week X was full of being a 'big girl'. Over the last couple of days she must have said several times: 'I'm only little, mummy.' What plainer talk could I have that she's finding it a bit grown up for her. She told me that last night she dreamed that aliens were coming to get her. The day before yesterday she didn't even know what an alien was. What is fun for a seven year old is scary for a four year old. i wish I had kept her with her childminder but I was worried she'd find it dull with the babies, but she wouldn't have if she had been with K. It was a mistake, I think, but too late now. Next year she will probably be old enough for it.

Meanwhile she is regressing. She asked me for baby food for supper and the buggy came out too. I cuddled her all supper and fed her like a baby. She cried when I left her this morning. It makes my heart bleed and weep all at once. I waited three quarters of an hour hoping she would calm down and then finally just went. All day I felt a criminal,even though i rang and they said she had stopped crying just after I left.

When I got her this evening she seemed to have developed control freak tendencies and had the manic grin of a producer who's shoot is going slightly askew. She'd learned the word 'plans'. She had 'plans' for what we were going to have for supper, 'plans' for next week and 'plans' for her rabbit. She waved her hands around a lot like a little MD in a new business meeting. I tried to cuddle it all out of her all evening.

This morning her best friend K watched her crying with his big, serious eyes. He came and played near us on the climbing frame and entertained her with daring acts of swinging. After a while, when X was clinging and crying still, he looked at me and said, "just go..." with all the final ennui of an old man who has given up on help.