Category Archives: Parenting

April 6, 2011 · 9:03 am

A poem to help you remember wordy stuff

Seeing as you ask, here’s the poem I was taught in primary school to remember, er, word stuff.

Every name is called a NOUN,  field and fountain, street and town

In place of noun the PRONOUN stands, like he and she can clap their hands

 The ADJECTIVE describes a thing, As magic wand and bridal ring;

The VERB means action, something done – To read, to write, to jump, to run;

How things are done, the ADVERBS tell, As quickly, slowly, badly, well;

The PREPOSITION shows relation, As in the street, or at the station;

CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways, Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase;

The INTERJECTION cries out, ‘Hark! I need an exclamation mark!‘

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April 5, 2011 · 9:20 am

Classroom jargon is not helping pupils’ success criteria

DO your children discuss their Success Criteria with you? Are you fully aware of their Learning Objectives? How about their ELS?

Is it right that teachers are talking to six-year-olds using management speak which most parents don’t understand, yet alone their kids?

It’s truly astonishing how teachers are being told to talk to our children. It actually makes me really cross.

For those of you who haven’t had to darken the doors of a primary school for some decades, let me explain.

School has always had a reputation for the blah, blah, blah. Even the most conscientious of swots must have drifted off when certain teachers forgot how to have a normal conversation with their fellow human beings.

But now even good teachers are trotting out phrases like ‘going forward’ and ‘achieving targets.’ It’s like they’ve been brainwashed.

And it’s having a knock-on effect – or should I say – a third-generation projection.

I teach university students and with very few exceptions, even those with A-grade A Levels cannot express themselves clearly in writing.

I’m not sure anyone could pinpoint when the jargon of modern teaching started infecting state-school classrooms.

It’s as if somewhere in the late 90s, a ‘consultant educator,’ with no grasp on reality, vomited all the management phrases they knew into a curriculum manual. A manual which should have stayed in the staffroom.

My first foray back into a primary school classroom in two decades came when I attended open days for Jed.

First, there seemed to be so many adults in the class. Teaching assistants, one-to-one carers, and if you’re lucky, a full-time teacher.

Second, their work didn’t appeared to get corrected. However, they did have little abbreviations like ‘LO’ written at the top of each page. Weird.

Eventually I mustered the courage to reveal to my son that despite telling him otherwise, I didn’t actually know everything:

“What’s ‘LO’ mean?” I asked.

“It’s the thing you have to have done by the end of the lesson.”

“Yes, but what does it stand for?”

“Er, I think it’s Learning Objective.”

“OK. Well, what’s an objective? What does the word mean?”

“. . . Er, I dunno. Can I go and watch Bob The Builder now?”

This highly-dramatised discussion with six-year-old Jed happened more than half his life ago.

But I had the same kind of ‘interface’ last week with Billy, aged 7. Only instead of Bob the Builder he’d have requested Spongebob Squarepants. Or Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The catalyst for my fresh bewilderment was ‘open-day’ at Billy’s primary school. A school I like very much, and which has done pretty well by my offspring so far.

We parents were given a leaflet with “Questions to Ask Your Child:”

They included phrases like What are you learning about in ELS? (I’ll translate in brackets: ELS = Early Learning Skills).

How do you use VCOP? (VCOP is the way they are told to write a sentence using Vocabulary. Connectives. Openers. Punctuation).

How do Success Criteria help you? (I’m not making this up)

When and how do you use your targets? (Like salesmen, five-year-olds have Targets, to be discussed with parents at ‘Termly Learning Conferences’ (which used to be called parents’ evenings) You even have to sign a ‘contract’)

The children at Open Day were very well-behaved and read aloud about all of the above jargon, plus ‘Core Values’ and the ‘Fish Wish’ (Fun. Involvement. Show. Help)

I asked a few children, including my own, if they could explain some of the phrases. Some of them recited, parrot-fashion, what had been on the board. Then I asked them to tell me what the words actually meant, and they didn’t know.

I’m all for expanding vocabulary, but if you are going to spout this nonsense at kids, you should explain what the ruddy words MEAN.

We should worry. Good schools are losing their ‘core values’ by relying on utter, utter gibberish. They accused previous generations for teaching by rote because we learned rhymes like ‘Every name is called a noun’ and ‘I before E except after C’ ? At least it was useful.

This management speak is absurd, meaningless, empty and misleading in adult working life, so why on earth are we endorsing it in schools?

I’m not being a pedant. Language does need to evolve to survive, but sloppy clichés and meaningless verbal noise do not make you clever. They make you annoying.

Can’t anyone just speak plainly any more? Or is that just blue-sky thinking?

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April 4, 2011 · 8:17 am

Census wants to know marital status of kids

 HAVE you filled out your Census then? Come-on, they want it back yesterday.

Don’t kid yourself it’s so that your great-great-grandchildren can track you down on Ancestry programmes in the year 2199.

This is about money.

Government funding is linked directly to how many people live in a particular council area. That’s why they have employed 30,000 census inspectors to visit the homes of those who don’t return the forms by post or online. Armed with threats of £1,000 fines and criminal prosecutions (you’ll be classed alongside rapists and murderers), the census police will come a-knocking.

Filling in the form for our house was time-consuming, because there’s six of us. One question asked each of my children, all aged under 13, about their marital status. There wasn’t a box for “I’m a child, for goodness sake.” We had to tick “Never married and never registered a same-sex civil partnership.”

Poor old Bonnie, at the age of three she must feel like such an old maid . . .

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March 26, 2011 · 9:57 am

We’re all going on a festi-holiday

SEEING as we’re all skint, and booking an overseas family holiday seems a thing of the past, we’ve started planning this year’s Festi-Hol.

Blessed with an oversized family and an ageing Bongo campervan, our trips away in recent years have included one of my big dislikes – camping.

However, throw me at a festival and somehow the discomfort and hassle seems to lessen. Slightly.

Add a few bottles of cider and some brilliant live bands at sundown and I’m yours for the duration. I’ll even bring my own supernoodles.

The mother of all family festivals is Camp Bestival in Dorset, which drew us in a couple of years back with promises of Mr Tumble, Zane Lowe and Florence and the Machine.

Combining the weekend with a few days exploring beautiful Dorset from a windy campsite, we felt we’d killed two birds with one stone. The kids slept in a tent, played on beaches and ran around at a festival being either cool and detached, arty and dancy, or just watching mesmerised from the comfort of a pram (depending on their age).

This year we’re tempted back to Camp Bestival as they appear to have booked headline acts specifically with us in mind: Blondie, Primal Scream, Mark Ronson, Wrench 32, Katy B, the Gruffalo and Mr Tumble. Add in the skatepark, comedy tent, zoo in the woods and fellow families-in-the-same-boat, and it’s already sounding better than a week in Majorca.

If you’re nervous of festi-holling with kids, then do your research. We used to do the festival circuit regularly pre-parenthood, and some we’d avoid. While Glastonbury does cater well for families, it is dauntingly huge. V, Reading and Leeds are not really aimed at a junior audience, and you tend to see more than you bargain for at the more rock or dance music festivals.

Some of the family festivals offer payment plans, but charge extra for boutique camping, parking and camper passes.

If you don’t have a campervan, the festival experience isn’t too hideous. You can park up and transfer all heavy tent stuff to a pull-trolley (most festivals will hire you one), and the toilet facilities are much, much better than they used to be.

As long as you’re prepared to carry a few packets of tissues and wash with wet-wipes for a couple of days, sleep badly, eat far too many chips, and bribe your children with over-priced ice-creams, it’s a great experience. There’s so much to see, as well as people-watching the wild dressing-up outfits and the Boden-clad Yummy Mummies who get their nannies to watch the kids while they pretend to like poetry.

Finish your weekend with a visit to Monkey World or the Tank Museum, and a festi-hol can tick more boxes than your average family trip ever could.

Family-friendly festivals for 2011

Larmer Tree, July 13 – 17, near Salisbury. 5 days £197 adult, £158 aged 11-17, £127 5-10, day tickets available. Line-up Joolz Holland, Imelda May, Seasick Steve, Asian Dub Foundation.

Camp Bestival – July 28-31, Lulworth Castle, Dorset, Adult £170, Ages 11-17 £85, under 11s free, Line-up Blondie, Primal Scream, Laura Marling, Mark Ronson, ABC, Katy B

Womad, July 29-31, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, £135, £70 aged 14-17, under 13s free. Line-up: Very much world/jazzy

Guilfest July 15-17, Stoke Park, Guildford, £120 , aged 12-15 £70, under 12s free. Line-up Razorlight, James Blunt, PIL, Peter Andre and Erasure

Beautiful Days, August 19-21, Devon, adult, £110, 14-17, £60, under 14 £30. Line-up Big Audio Dynamite, Cater USM and founders The Levellers

Latitude, July 14-17, Beccles, Suffolk, Adult £170, £5 for 5-12 year olds. Line-up, The National, Suede, Paolo Nutini, Waterboys, OMD, Paloma Faith

Bestival – September 8-11, Isle of Wight, £170, aged 13-15 £85, under 13s free. Line-up The Cure, Primal Scream, Magnetic Man, Grandmaster Flash, loads more names

Shambala, Aug 25-28, Kelmarsh, Northants, £119, 15-17 years £79, 5-14 years £29, under 5s free, no names, no advertising, no sponsors, good fun.

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March 25, 2011 · 8:45 am

Peppa Pig’s Party felt like a mugging

BONNIE, aged 3, has been quite beside herself with excitement this week as she knew there was a promise of a trip to see Peppa Pig.

Peppa Pig’s Party is a touring show with live puppets of Peppa, George plus all their friends. Needless to say Northampton’s Derngate auditorium was packed to the rafters with excited under-fives.

Good puppets

Bonnie was dumbstruck as the show opened and Susie Sheep appeared, talking to the audience, perched a-top a tent. But as the show progressed and the visible human puppeteers shared stage time with her cartoon heroes, she lost interest.

The puppets are very impressive and the actors do their best to imitate the voices of the TV characters. There was singing and dancing, and George’s tantrum tears soaked a few rows of the audience, to much hilarity. But sadly there was little else of the familiar humour of the cartoon show in the stage script.

The shrill voice of Peppa’s new human ‘friend’ Daisy made me wince throughout, and the whole affair seemed remarkably short. About an hour with a very long interval to buy merchandise? At £15.50 a ticket? A family ticket over £50? Not very good value for money, but not, I suspect, the fault of Derngate, as touring shows tend to set their own prices.

We felt further mugged when we found it cost £7 for a light-up windmill (take your old one from the panto), £5 for a very cheap and flimsy programme filled with Peppa product adverts, and most shocking, £4 for a balloon. Yes, four pounds for a balloon!

So, five shows in two days in a 2,000 seat theatre, at £15ish a head and a tenner per family for merchandise. . .well, you do the maths.

It all sounds rather greedy, raking in parents’ cash off the back of Peppa Pig’s popularity, and yet there’s a lot better children’s theatre out there struggling to make ends meet. Sorry Peppa, but it was an expensive disappointment.

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March 17, 2011 · 9:00 am

Mums get too big for their boots

 I APOLOGISE in advance to those of you who may be pregnant with your first baby, but putting on weight is the least of your post-natal physical problems.

Denise Van Outen revealed last week how she’s given away some of her stupidly-expensive designer shoes because her feet have grown a size since giving birth to her daughter.

While I could spend the next 500 words making columnist-like comments about how she’s already back in her pre-pregnancy size-ten designer dresses, and that celebrities are not in a position to be telling Real People how hard life is, I’ll try to be helpful instead.

Your body will NOT be like it was before you had a baby. It just won’t. You are going to be different in lots of ways once you force another human being out of your nether regions. And that’s not something you should fight.

My feet went from a five and a half to a seven after having kids. During pregnancy it was one of the many discomforts that caught me out, along with chronic heartburn, restless-legs (hard to explain but very annoying) and a ‘metallic’ taste in my mouth. At least I didn’t get bad morning sickness with the latter three pregnancies. Just a couple of weeks of urging.

The enlarged feet issue was put down to water-retention by my midwives. I was given the impression that after the birth they would shrink back to their normal-for-a-five-foot-six-woman size.

They didn’t.

I spent my pregnancies in trainers and flat pumps (can’t stand the feeling of toe-posts in flip-flops) and now stomp about in whopping great size sevens.

The swelling went down but I remain flat-footed with painful fallen-arches, a curse that I tried to blame on genetics but should probably accept is due to my preference for very flat footwear with no internal support whatsoever (and the fact that even before I had the excuse of motherhood I might politely be termed as ‘a big girl.’)

If you are suffering from agonising pain in your feet then I heartily recommend you ask for a referral to the podiatry team at your hospital. They will at least fit you with a pair of arch supports to go in the one pair of shoes that might still have enough room to squeeze your aching trotters into. You may be lucky, your feet may return to their normal size.

But then before you’ve even started to address your post-natal weight-gain, you’ve got to accept that the boobs that will forever point south, the stretch marks will not disappear with expensive lotions and those thread veins on your legs are yours for life.

Embrace the bigger feet, the squidgy stomach, and the boobs that threaten to suffocate you when tying your children’s laces. They are the indicators of a new stage of your womanhood. You might have the physical scars of battle but you’ve got a baby to show for it.

Quite possibly the most important thing you should accept as truth is as follows:

Unless you truly, honestly, remember to do your pelvic floor exercises EVERY DAY, once you become a mother you will occasionally pee when you get a bad cough or laugh.

I know. It’s a shock. Those Tena Lady adverts are aimed at older woman and you’ll feel like a pensioner when you have to buy them at the age of 27. I hope if you’re pregnant you will be clenching as you read this.

I’m sure that ‘occasional bladder-weakness’ is one side-effect of pregnancy that you won’t see the too-big-for-their-boots celebrities talking about on the red carpet.

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March 12, 2011 · 9:24 am

Chickens as pets? No clucking hope

It seems to be the accepted truth that anyone with children must, by default, have pets too.

But we don’t.

No dogs, cats, fish, lizards, rats, rabbits, snakes, gerbils, geckos or guinea pigs cluttering up and stinking out our house. (Just Bloke and the kids cluttering up and stinking out our house).Weird huh?

It’s not like it hasn’t been discussed. And often.

Bloke and I both had dogs we adored while growing up, and have wavered many times over the years about getting one, but could never really agree. He doesn’t like small dogs and I don’t want a whopper. We both agreed if we did get one it would be a puppy from a rescue centre and be a mongrel, but then, what if the dog was unpredictable around kids? And what about the extra mouth to feed? And vet’s bills? And being able to go on holiday?

Ultimately, the big “No” came because we thought it wouldn’t be fair on the dog. We both work and a puppy needs round-the-clock attention. Even though I’m a freelancer and often at home, sometimes I’m not, and that unpredictability is the issue. It might be fine, it might not.

I’ve always felt that it wasn’t the right time. After all, we sometimes struggle to keep up with the demands of four small humans, without adding another being into the mix.

We actually had a hamster, once upon-a-time, when Jed and Doug were about four and five. It was called ‘Outfit,’ and named after Dougie mis-heard the name of a cartoon hamster called “Elephant.” (Something to do with American accents).

Despite all the promises, Outfit’s care, attention and cleaning out ended-up being my sole responsibility. Everyone else in the house seemed to lose all sense of smell and forgot that the poor little critter quite liked a tumble around the living-room in his plastic ball. And although the books claim hamsters only live a couple of years, Outfit seemed to last FOR EVER. Until, of course, he died.

And then suddenly everyone behaved like they’d lost their best friend. Weeping went on for days. We had a solemn burial in the back garden where the overflowing compost heap now stands.

After Outfit’s demise, we had two more children to distract everyone from getting pets.

But for the past few years, the nagging has returned. Dougie is actually a little fearful of dogs, having been flattened by an over-amorous Bernese Mountain Dog when he was about seven, but still begs us for a dog he can care for and take for walks.

Billy asks for a Real Dog every birthday and Christmas. Jed too promises he’ll care it and walk it, even if it’s December and raining. “And it’s not like it could make the house look any worse,” they plead.

I stand resolute. “Maybe one day. . .”

This weekend, Bonnie and I ended up at Bell Plantation garden centre in Towcester. If you’ve never been, it has an impressive poultry section. As well and loads of different hens and cockerels, it has rabbits and ducks and has recently added three pigs. (Bonnie decided they were called Peppa, George and Chloe, after the characters in her favourite TV show, but the store has yet to announce their names by a public vote).

Bonnie was initially impressed by the pigs, but they were too busy eating to even look at her. She was far more interested in the chickens. They did, predictably, cluck over her, coming to the front of the hen houses and not even nipping her when she disobeyed orders and stuck her digits through the wire.

“Can we take hens home?” she asked, optimistically.

I admit it, I wavered, despite the potential cost and smell. (I grew up in Devon, spent much of my childhood on farms and can officially confirm that chicken poo and pig poo are next in line behind humans for olfactory offensiveness).

Bonnie with pigs 'Peppa, George and Chloe'

It does sound nice, doesn’t it, having fresh eggs from the garden? Hearing that gentle clucking? They are supposed to be ‘easy’ to keep and good with children? The hen-houses on sale look study and could fit in our small garden?

Have I been mean by never letting my own children know the joy a family pet can bring?

Bloke was consulted. “The fox will get them. It will be carnage.”

“What fox?”

“The fox that lives in every urban street, the one which will kill any chickens we get.”

While a dog will continue to be the number one choice, it still appeals to me, keeping chickens, although the boys wouldn’t have anything to take for a walk and they don’t lend themselves to being house-trained or snuggling up on your lap.

I must stand resolute. “Maybe one day. . .”

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March 4, 2011 · 8:30 am

Big prices for tiny clothes

 I CAN hardly believe how much girly-ness one small person can inflict  onto a family, but sure enough our daughter has us tripping over dolls and pink stuff at every turn.

A big shock to the system was discovering how much dolls clothes cost.

What an utter rip-off. £17.99 for a tiny plain doll’s dress and knickers? That’s more than I pay for clothes for the actual kids. And £5.99 for five doll-sized nappies? It costs less for a pack of 30-odd real ones!

When we finally had a daughter after three beloved sons, I thought we’d escape most of the uber-girl stuff by virtue of her being around boys all the time. Guaranteed tom-boy. None of this gender-stereotyping for my girl.

But since she’s met other girls ( apparently I don’t count), she’s become fixated by dolls, tea-sets and cleaning. So much for the liberation of women.

She’s recently been stripping her dolls of their boring babygros and wrapping them in blankets.

So when some birthday money arrived, we took her to buy some outfits for her dolls. Her 20 quid went on a multi-pack of three girl-doll outfits.

Problem is, one of her three dolls is called Ron.

When we got home we had a grand trying-on session, with me crossing my fingers that Baby Annabel, the chunkier of the three, would squeeze into snug jeans and a t-shirt.

Meanwhile, Baby Ron now sports a pair of pink joggers and a cap-sleeved top.

When I suggested that Baby Ron might actually now be a girl doll rather than a boy doll, she replied firmly: “No, he’s still a boy.” I sincerely hope she stays as non-judgemental and open-minded her whole life.

Having bleated to other parents about the price of dolls’ clothes, I heard two great tips:

The first is never to buy doll’s toys new, but to trawl eBay and car-boot sales for second-hand items. The other is to search charity shops for premature or under-weight baby clothes, which apparently fit most dolls just fine.

My own tip is to use grandma. My mother is a brilliant seamstress and first-class knitter. She makes jumpers for the boys that they actually wear, and very funky hats and ponchos for Bonnie. So I’m going to ask if she’ll make some clothes for the three dolls, Ron, Annabel and Vanessa.

I can see Ron now, in shirt and trousers made from granddad’s old clothes. If I can get her to knit Ron a cardie and make him a cap, it could even be a full-granddad outfit. Needles at the ready Mum?

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March 2, 2011 · 9:13 pm

Staying positive over secondary school admissions?

IF you have a child who is about to go up to secondary school in September, then this week is likely to be horribly nerve-wracking, and you have my complete sympathy.

This is the week the school place allocation letters go out (or if you can wait several hours for the county council computer to grind into action, you may find out online).

As detailed in previous episodes of these weekly ramblings, I have had two experiences of this so far. For one child we got our first choice, for the other, we didn’t.

You feel guilt when your child doesn’t get their first choice and guilt about everyone else when they do. But thankfully, both our boys seem to be getting on OK in their different schools, which have various pros and cons.

The whole system is a farce, but for the sake of our kids we have to make the best of it.

I can’t stop you being anxious, but I can tell you that the right thing for you to do is be positive around your child and not rant and rave about the school they may end up having to go to, where chances are, they may actually be happy and thrive.

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February 23, 2011 · 8:35 am

For *&$^’s sake, stop swearing . . .

THOSE who know me will snort loudly when they read this, but I hate to hear bad language around kids. Really.

I add the ‘around kids’ disclaimer because, I know you’ll find this hard to believe, I can be prone to a pressure-relieving, potty-mouthed rant at times, (mostly) in adult company. From my experience, journalists rank high among the most frequent users of caustic language on earth.

But I wince when I hear other adults swear with impunity in front of their kids – or any kids for that matter.

My own folks were very strict about us not using bad language, even though they were partial to the odd minor cuss, mostly “bloody,” to emphasise a point. They were allowed to swear, because they were adults. We never really questioned it (and made sure we swore out of earshot).

Imagine my reaction when I overheard one of our older children describing something using a swear word. It wasn’t one of the very, very worst words (rhymes with ‘ditty,’ since you ask), but he got sent to his room and reminded at length about his vocabulary.

A few days later I heard our older boys talking with their friends on Xbox Live, where they have a headset and can talk to each other as they play. I listened in.

The language was shocking, and they didn’t even seem to know the meaning of most of the words they were saying.

“Don’t their parents tell them off for that language?” I asked, only to be told that many of their friends had their games consoles in their bedrooms and their parents didn’t know they were playing, let alone who they were talking to, or what they were saying.

This was further confirmed when I was doing my exercise workouts on the Xbox Kinect, after 10pm, over several nights. Every few minutes I’d get on-screen messages from their friends, imagining that either Jed or Dougie was playing, asking them to connect. This was between 10.30 and midnight on a school night!

We may be aware of the risks our children are exposed to over the internet, and monitor their computer use, but do we have clue what they’re doing on the games consoles in their bedrooms?

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