You are so excited, on Monday you start the first of what will be many years at school. It is not a big step for you as Preschool is in the same building and you have walked the register down to reception and had a lunch with the bigger children too.
You are looking forward to getting your uniform on with Maxi and taking those first steps to adulthood, but I am not yet prepared. I am following your lead and making sure that I am excited with you and we are busy talking about your friends, your wonderful teacher (who was Maxi's last year) and school lunches.
I have written your name in your uniform and you have been wearing your school shoes for a few hours inside each day to make sure they are comfortable and you are raring to go. To make a start on the journey that is life. It seems such a small step for you.
But for me it is immense, for the fist time in four years, I am entrusting you to someone who will spend more waking hours in the day with you that I do, that will have more influence over you than me and Daddy will. We know you will be safe, well looked after and secure. Your teacher is a star, one in a million, but it doesn't stop the worries running through my head.
Not only that, but it is the start of a lifetime of pressure to conform, of people highlighting your differences and trying to fit you in to a round hole.
Me and Daddy have discussed many times what we wish for you. I want you to be happy, that you take life with two hands and smile in the face of adversity. I want you to grow up knowing right from wrong, with a good moral compass and the strength to act when you see things happening that are not acceptable in life.
I want you to be able to feel comfortable in your own skin and know that I love your uniqueness and I will endeavor to instill you with the confidence to continue to be the man that you are growing into. Don't worry about your differences, embrace them, I do.
So go on Monday with that big smile on your cheeky face and the song in your heart and sing my baby, but most of all dance to the beat of your own drum.
