The kids are back at school, and that means flinging my child into the sweary bear-pit of London transport

The hardest thing I have ever done was letting go of my child at the top of a huge waterslide when he was three. There were other children around the same size and smaller than him cheerfully doing the same thing. I had an adult friend at the base, ready to catch him at the bottom. I had suggested that we should carry on going down the dipping and twirling shute together for a while, until he was, perhaps, 24. But my boy was insistent and so, at the top, I carefully positioned him, squeezed my eyes shut and, after some encouragement from the other parents, staff and a four-year-old girl, I loosened my grip on him and let him go. He was fine. Of course. He loved it and we did it again and again until I actually opened my eyes to watch and everyone agreed that I had been very brave.

No waterpark could ever have prepared me for this week. This was the week where my curly-headed, soft-cheeked now 11-year-old child got into a school uniform for the first time. Shirt, tie and blazer down to his knees and off he went to high school on public transport ON HIS OWN.

When I say on his own, I mean of course that he met up with primary school friends going to the same school and they went in together. And when I say went in together, I mean went in together with me and all their mums accompanying them.

“We’ll just go with them on their first day,” we mums told each other. But we were there on the second day too, and on the third day, also for pick-ups.

I will be honest and tell you that I’m writing this from a cafe directly opposite my son’s new school.

Now I know many people will read this and scoff, “cut the apron strings!” But it’s hard. We live in London. These kids are squeezing on to buses and tubes with LONDON commuters. Have you seen Londoners at commuter time? We have to have posters telling us to give up seats for pregnant women and not to punch staff. At commuter time when you’re squashed on a train, your nose stuck in someone’s armpit and a family with five suitcases who decide there’s plenty of room to join you. It’s everyone for themselves. Children who were sharing a playground with five-year-olds just a few short months ago now having to join in this scrum is frankly terrifying.

All around our borough there were scattered similarly attired babies, sorry, pupils from my son’s primary school. Sitting nervously at bus stops, on Tubes, walking with backpacks bigger than themselves, all off to whichever high school in our locale they had been assigned to. These are all children I watched play sheep in nativity play. I’ve wiped their noses at birthday parties and dried their tears when they have fallen over. All of them are out now in the big, wide “can you move down a bit please?” and “for f***’s sake!” world.

On day two, we got them on the tube home and the inevitable happened. A hot and bothered commuter, on seeing a group of uniformed kids get on a train (none, by the way, remotely rude or in his way) growled “F***ing little s***s” as he got on. These kids are 11. I should have left it. I know I should have. I have drummed into my son, “if people are horrid just ignore them. Let them be the angry one, never you”. But I can never help myself. “Hey. These are OUR little s***s”, and off I went, having a set-to with an angry man on a train and creating a scene and behaving exactly as I’d warned my son not to.

Our gang of mummy chaperones will let go next week (or maybe the week after) and allow our children to travel alone. I respectfully plead with commuters everywhere to connect with that instinct to protect kids instead of being irritated by them. Look out for the horrible adults who take their frustration out on them. Even if we are not parents, most of us know what it’s like to be loved by a parent, how they worry and fret about us. Notice the little ones travelling alone. You don’t have to talk to them (I mean, really, don’t), just keep an eye out. Speak up if you see them being intimidated (yes London, take your headphones off for a moment, I’m talking to you).

When I started school, you would die if your parents were seen to pick you up. It seems much more normal now, in our borough anyway. Almost weekly reports of muggings and stabbings have put a fear in parents that I’m not sure was there in the Eighties. On the first day, I worried that I would be the only parent at the gate at pick-up. I wasn’t. There were loads. One family had brought a bunch of helium balloons to greet their child with. When he came out, they let go of the balloons with him. In the Eighties if your parents did that you’d have to relocate to Honolulu. Grown-up me found it cringey AND adorable. Even if the child had found it mortifying, he’d have still gone through life knowing he was deeply loved.