On dead cats and September lilacs.
September: a significant month in the life of a family all involved in education. For years, every September I had a recurring imposter...
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Just a mum, sharing stories.
Learning on the job
Just a mum, sharing stories.
Teacher and mum of three Sarah shares reflections and stories of mumlife and raising boys.
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On being the poo queen.
It’s my 25th blog (google tells me this is a ‘quadranscentennial’ event, what a lovely ridiculous Latinate word!) and I reckon it’s...
On acronyms.
My youngest found some photo books with pictures of our family from before he was born. He was quite forlorn to see his brothers having...
On why three is the perfect number (for us).
I love the Radfords and the Duggars and TV shows called things like “15 kids and counting”. Homes with big sibling groups look like so...
On rethinking.
Returning from holiday is undeniably effortful. Not least for my husband who does all the driving and takes care of all the big practical...
On hospitals and Storm Troopers.
We’re teachers and we’re caravanners, so we get to go away a lot, lucky us, including long summer trips normally down to Devon and...
On boys, boys, boys.
It’s not a complete overstatement to say that I wasted the first half of my life wishing for boys, and then wasted the second half...
On pendulums and structure.
“Children thrive on routine. Make sure you establish a routine early on if you want a settled child.” “Be led by your child – don’t try...
On why it feels so particular with me.
In the opening scenes of ‘Hamlet’, Queen Gertrude questions her son, Prince Hamlet, why he feels so strongly about his father’s death,...
On tripping disasters.
Something happened this week which really tickled me: I’d arranged for an outside speaker to come in to give a talk to students on...
On becoming dispensable.
I like to make myself indispensable. In my previous school it was almost a joke with myself to see if I could get a message in every...
On barometers and compassion.
Two of our three boys have tic disorders. For us, it’s nothing like in the comedy sketches with the funny inappropriate swearing (only a...
On wise words from a Welsh woman.
There’s a wonderfully warm wise Welsh woman I know. Her early years were spent on a bicycle practising midwifery in London in the 1960s,...
On when ‘It’s ok.’ is not ok.
We were once at a party in a friend’s garden, a goodbye party to be precise, for her grown up son who was emigrating to the States with...
On changing labels.
The first school I worked out boasted an impressive number of established members of staff, the ‘old-timers’ who had worked there for...
On basbousa and other disasters.
I have a very evolving relationship with homework. As I student, I tolerated it; as a teacher, I enforce it; as a parent… a little bit of...
On being an ex-dancer.
There’s a stage post-toddler years that I’ve observed in myself and others, where every handlebar is like the handle of a buggy, and you...
On the surprising challenges of being an expert.
I don’t claim to be an expert in much. I probably know more than average about, say, psychopannychism in Victorian female poetry (google...
On appreciation of dairy cows.
Like many women, I had positive expectations about motherhood. I attended a Yoga Birth club and learnt how I could ‘breathe out’ (ha!) my...
On the yuckiness of little children.
We apparently make snotty babies. Snotty like not sleeping because they’re gargling on their own phlegm. Snotty like the pediatric staff...
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