Are you a dad? Do you feel lost and alone when stood in the school playground waiting to collect your children? Well these blog posts are for you!
Just to be clear, mums often say they feel the same way. Dads, however, are fewer in number. Spare a thought also for the grandparents who you see doing the school run. Who goes up and speaks to them?
Despite the advent of podcasts, blogs and other forms of digital media, radio is still a great place for holding live discussions and debate. Just yesterday I was involved in a very interesting discussion on Radio 5 Live about how much freedom you should give your school-aged children. The result was rather like what’s happening in Parliament with Brexit: There was very little consensus whatsoever between the three of us who were chatting about the issue.
Returning to school as a parent was a very strange experience. I recall on one of Helen’s first days in reception class, standing in the playground feeling terrified as she played on a climbing frame, the only kid to be doing so. I wasn’t sure if she was meant to use the frame and was terrified that I might get in trouble for letting her clamber over it. It was like I had reverted back to being a school kid and was worried about upsetting a teacher or, worse still, the headteacher.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Pinterest recently, updating various boards. While doing so, I came across a blog post I wrote last October about the impact on my life of Izzy, our youngest daughter, starting school.
The expectation of how life would change once Izzy was at school has turned out to be quite different from the reality
Preparing to send your child to primary school is a massive milestone. Preparing to send your child to secondary school is not only a massive milestone, but utterly terrifying. What doesn’t help is the approach taken by some schools.
Trying to decide which school might be best for your kids is hard enough. Some schools make it harder still.
Just the other day, I set myself a question to answer: What was scarier, a bunch of schoolchildren or the rainforest? I was going into my daughters’ school to talk about my experiences in the rainforest.
My audience looked a little like this. Only thing is, there were 120 of them who listened intently to my tales from the rainforest.