A frail little girl in pigtails smiles shyly with all her milk teeth still intact, waiting for her mother to take a photo of her wearing her first school uniform.

Little does she know that it will be the first of 11 different school uniforms, and that the excitement of a new beginning will turn into a traumatic habit.

When I turned four, my mother took me to the school principal to test me for school readiness. I had been bugging her to let me go to "big school" since I was three.

Being the last of six children, it was only natural for me to want to fill their bigger shoes. Seeing them leave in their school uniforms with their schoolbags made me feel like an outcast.

The principal was very happy with my level of intelligence and understanding: I was school-ready. So I was assigned to start school the next year.

But that pricnipal, Mr Botha, never became my principal; I never attended his school because we moved a couple of months before the term started. I ended up attending three different schools in grade one because my dad "couldn't find his fee". Now I guiltily catch myself wondering if it wasn't rather his mind that he couldn't find?

We moved to Rustenburg when I was in standard two. I attended two different schools but was at last granted the privilege of finishing my primary school education in peace.

The funny thing was that I was a very happy and friendly child who didn't seem to have a problem making new friends (I guess I didn't really have a choice). I was very sensitive though, and wanted to cry whenever a teacher looked at me sideways.

That was probably my second first grade teacher's fault. She should not have been a teacher.

I ended up seeming to be as normal as any child, singing in the school choir and being quite a good high jump athlete, although I was extremely average academically. This was clearly very strange to the teachers since they often reprimanded me for being an "underachiever". Why don't teachers ask why instead of scowling?

I understand that teachers can't have a personal relationship with each and every pupil, but even when it's so clear that something is wrong they tend to immediately think that a child is "lazy". Is it that, or not wanting to get involved because who knows what awful stories might come spilling out if the child has to open his or her mouth? Nobody wants to take responsibility any more.

But what if the child only needs to talk, not needing you to take responsibility but just an understanding ear?

Teachers aren't psychic, they don't always know the difference between "lazy" and "maybe it's more serious". I know this because I had so many teachers in the years I was growing up, and I understand now that they were also just humans trying to get by.

However, children don't know if they should talk or to whom to talk because trust is a very fragile thing -- even though it's a word that's flung around like a frisbee. Not for one moment do I resent that no teacher ever took notice; I just regret that they all jumped to the same conclusion: "You're lazy."

I was very happy to go through the transition from primary school to high school; somehow I thought everything would be different. We had been living in the same house for four years -- the longest we had stayed anywhere since my birth. So it was probably just natural to believe that would last forever. Not that that was a conscious thought.

In standard six my parents discussed moving to America, which never happened. At the end of standard seven I was sent away to live with my sister to help her with her children while she was recovering from a back operation. It didn't work out so I was sent back to my parents in Rustenburg, but enrolled in a different high school.

Then my dad was retrenched from the job he had probably kept the longest in his life. He bought a shoe store in a small town I don't even want to mention. Then the same as in grade one: three different schools in standard eight. Strange that bad things often happen in threes?

I hated the school, I didn't understand the small town clique syndrome, and the teachers, as well as the pupils, didn't understand me. I was all grown up before my time.

At last I convinced my mom to leave my dad. She went to her sister in America and I went to live with another of my sisters.

School number 10 was in Ellisras, and my favourite school of them all. Mom came back from America and we moved again, to stay in a granny flat behind another sister's house in Pretoria. School number 11 was probably not so bad, but I just didn't have energy left to give it a chance. So I skipped more classes than I attended. Who would have thought that a child at 16 didn't have the energy for anything, or the interest for that matter? It's possible.

I can't say that my life has stabilised since then. I'm still on the move, and still working on the same energy and interest levels, at age 31.

Does this mean that the habits of the father (just like the sins) can be inherited? What do you think?