Last week was exam week for Dani and his fellow students. Mid year exams. There will be more to come before they finish for the summer in December. Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s a little bit too much, asking kids of that age to do exams. Still, what do I know?

This week the results are rolling in. He has done quite well up to now. Not that I am particularly bothered. Neither is he – which I actually think is a good thing, and here’s why…

Dani is 8 years old but there are some in his school year who are 10 years old. Most are 9. It seems that many of his colleagues have been under some sort of pressure (call it stress if you like) – judging from what he tells me. I asked him several times in the build up to exam week if he was in any way worried or concerned about the tests. He said clearly that he was not. I am glad about that. Proud of him in fact. I don’t want him worrying about school exams at eight years of age.

I asked about the other kids in his class/year. He thought there were quite a few who had admitted to being nervous about the exams. Also based on what he had overheard among small group discussions he got the impression there were some who were definitely worried. I think that’s fairly sad at their age. Is this really the world they are growing up in? I suppose it has always been competitive but not at such a young age – I think.

At that age we hardly had a care in the world. If we did it certainly wasn’t about school and exams. Maybe by doing these exams at such a young age they will just get used to it as they get older. I hope so. That’s too young to be worrying about school exams. They should be enjoying the learning process while being encouraged not to worry about the exams. They have lots of homework which is bad enough at that age. We never had that until we reached high school age. And we turned out fine. Didn’t we? Aha… That’s the million dollar question right there eh? Answers on a postcard please.

And that brings me to news of our first visitors since arriving in Australia. Dani’s abuelos are arriving late Thursday/early Friday. Dani can show them Sydney… That should be fun hahahaa…