Tanya Sweeney: My daughter's first day at 'big school' was more challenging than either of us expected

I told the little kids starting their first day at school to drop in on the way so I could admire their uniforms. Sure enough, they stood on the doorstep, starched and pressed in their uniforms, their hair done in elaborate, first-day-of-school styles. I burst into tears, as I often do when I see a child on their first day of school.

Fast forward five years to the present day, and little kids on the first day of school still make my tear ducts spring into involuntary action. It's their optimism, I think. The hugeness of the milestone moment. That, and the idea that they're on the cusp of 14 years of hard academic labour, poor lambs.

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