#MummyFail

I'm not going to be entered for any "Mum of the Year" awards. I know that.

Being a Mum is just not quite what I expected.  We're thrown images of women with babes in arms, looking lovingly whilst they're being fed. Of happy children playing in the snow, not crying because they are so cold and the snowman whose only about 1 foot tall wont stand up.

I'm shown adverts on television of kids happily playing board games.  I'm assuming these kids are not siblings otherwise one would be crying the other storming off after launching the game board in the air.  In these adverts houses are immaculate.  Mine's like a bomb-site. I'm sure the six year old carries pocket grenades around. No room is safe.

The 10 year old has a bad attitude is uncooperative and negative. I've already posted about our homework hell.  I hate the homework and the weekends of pain. Except now it's stretched out all week as he gets homework Tuesday and Friday.

His attitude to homework is lazy, slapdash and hap-hazard. Chuck in a couple of tantrums, pen throwing and shouting at the 6 year old and you're beginning to get the picture.

When my day ends like this, you know it's a #MummyFail.

What's not been your best parenting hour?

In Sickness And In Health.

I met MrM in 1998. Our relationship progressed the way these things do. He proposed; I said yes and we married in a beautiful ceremony in 2001.

When we married, I took my vows very seriously. I may have crossed my fingers at the obey bit but overall, I meant what I was saying. Vowing before God and family and friends that I was marrying this man and this was it.

Since then we've had many ups and down. All relationships do and we've always managed to work at it and are still smiling 17 years on.

But, there's one problem. It's MrM.  if he was a dog, he'd have been put down. If he was a horse, he'd be glue or put out to pasture.  There's always something wrong.  I don't mean he's a hypochondriac and luckily he doesn't have anything seriously wrong. It's just a series of things that are never ending.

THIS WAY UP

I've lost count of the amount of operations he's had.  At least two on his ankles, one on his bum sphincterotomy - (only look if you're brave). He's been knocked off his motorbike, breaking his elbow and giving his knee a lovely scar. He had a chest infection and passed out DRIVING THE CAR! Luckily in a park mid morning in the week and no-one was hurt. He was hospitalised with severe food poisoning.  He suffered for years with IBS. Red meat was a factor so we spent a lot of time eating a white meat and fish diet.  Migraines; debilitating migraines until he saw a neurologist and is now on preventable tablets for the rest of his life.  Funnily enough when the migraines got sorted the IBS greatly improved too.  The list goes on.

At the moment Mr.M is sporting a cast on his right hand.  Playing football, a stint in goal and BAM! a fractured thumb, a chipped bone and torn ligaments. It may need surgery, we're waiting to find out.

I'm just hoping that our children don't inherit Daddy's knack for being poorly!

The Writing Rant.

Joined up - "cursive" writing is part of the National Curriculum. This is what my the 10 year old's Year 6 teacher told me at last weeks parents evening when I also brought up my issue that he's not allowed to use the blue pen he has as it's "the wrong colour blue"  - I kid you not!

When they sit their KS2 SAT's they are marked down if they cannot display they are able to employ cursive writing.  


The National Curriculum states:

Pupils should be taught to:
Write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed by:
Choosing which shape of a letter to use when given choices and deciding whether or not to join specific letters
Choosing the writing implement that is best suited for a task.

It's recommended that:
Pupils should continue to practise handwriting and be encouraged to increase the speed of it, so that problems with forming letters do not get in the way of their writing down what they want to say. They should be clear about what standard of handwriting is appropriate for a particular task, for example, quick notes or a final handwritten version. They should also be taught to use and unjoined style, for example, for labelling a diagram or data, writing an email address, or for algebra and capital letters, for example, for filling in a form.

The 10 year old has neat writing, when it's not joined up.  When he adds curls and swirls and flicks and ticks it's an illegible mess.

I agree children need to know when to use capitals, how to speak and write using the correct grammar.  Don't get me started on how often the boy says "I am going FOR a toilet" instead of going TO the toilet!  Children need to know how to complete paperwork like job applications correctly for adult life but I disagree with the NEED for their written work to be joined.

When children get into their secondary schools the teachers don't care if their pupils writing is cursive, as long as it's legible. Is there any evidence that teaching joined-up writing early is necessary or useful? Do kids need to be taught any more than the basic stand-alone forms of letters? Can they not be allowed to develop fluency for themselves?

There are less and less professions these days where you actually need to physically write. I've even given up sending Christmas cards as it's too much effort to sit and write them.  Most of us already use whatever technology is available.  Even in Year 1 at school they use interactive white boards and iPads.  

If we can concentrate on the basics, the rest will follow and we might have a generation of Doctors where you can actually read what they have written*

What are your thoughts on cursive writing for children?





*All prescriptions and case notes are of course entered electronically these days.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

When I was 10, I was a precocious thing. A know-it-all with a penchant for back-chat.  Until I was firmly put in my place by my parents.

I have a 10 year old. Now they're not precocious; they're "TWEENS".  Moody, mouthy and with no respect for people or property.

This week, the 10 year old came home from school in a shirt and a pair of shorts.  This is not what he was wearing when I dropped him off in the morning.  It turns out after blindly dumping his bag on the playground floor in what turned out to be a steaming pile of fox poo. He picked up said bag, slung it over his shoulder and slung poo all over his clothes.  The school changed his clothes and put the dirty stuff in a bag for me to find later in the bottom of his school bag.

Both my children come home covered in pen.  Every. Day.  I keep all washing powders, washing up liquid and ASDA in business the amount I spend on trying to get rid of the pen and buying new polo shirts.  This day however; I noticed on the 10 year old it wasn't just the odd mark made by mad colouring in but a perfectly formed squiggle.   I asked him what it was and his reply.

"Oh I couldn't get my pen to work"

If you could just imagine the double take you see in cartoons.... that was me.

"Pardon? Did I hear you right? You couldn't get your pen to work so you just decide to draw on your clothes?"

"Yes, it's alright, it's not my top"

This is the point I got a bit "bug-eyed" and decided that he needed to appreciate how to respect things like property and drawing willy nilly on clothes was unacceptable.  So I told him he has to pay for a new polo shirt to give to the school.

We moved onto homework.  You may have seen my post last week about Homework Hell. This week took us to new limits.

He had 15 (yes 15!) new spellings to learn.  To start with I give him the spellings book alongside a dictionary. All he has to do is find the word. He has it written in front of him, he knows his alphabet. Apparently it's too hard.  We had tears, almost every word wasn't in there he declared. It's an Oxford English Dictionary... I checked. The words were in there.

After at least half an hour of crying, moaning, shouting (me) and general grumpiness he was flicking through the dictionary with such bad grace he ripped out a page.  I managed to point out he will now need to replace that alongside the school shirt.

Let's just say it didn't go down too well.  But how else will he learn that I don't have a bottomless purse and can replace everything that gets lost, ruined or broken?

It might teach him a little respect.

Homework Hell

I hated it as a child and I hate it now I have my own children.

I know they need to learn how to read and write.  How to spell, add up, multiply and divide.  That's why I send them to school for teachers WHO ARE TRAINED to show them.

Why do teachers feel the need to send my children home with a slip of paper telling them they need to do a two week project and spend x amount of hours on it?

What they mean is; they want me to spend two weeks nagging the child to make a plan and get on with it. I no doubt will have to make a trip to Tesco to print some photos, nip into work early to print it off or just do the damn homework myself.

We've made a bear in the woods. (He was in grizzly bear class). A paper mache Titanic, a large canvass of the planets, posters... plus other things I feel I have blanked out.

Don't get me started on when the bloody class mascot comes home!

It's a paper mache Titanic!

Does a bear shit in the woods?

The Recycling Rant...

I have surprised myself. I'm a bit of an Eco Warrior!  I never knew I'd be concerned about recycling my old tat. But I am.

At home I split my paper from my plastics and cardboard and my glass and tins into something else, another container for food waste. We're overflowing with different boxes for recycling. I try to give the 5yo as much as she can take to school. Boxes, plastic containers, yogurt pots, all with instructions not to bring it all back as a spaceship/house/bus.. insert whatever rubbish creation your child makes here.

At work we have LOTS of recycling bins all over the building and only a couple of general rubbish bins in the kitchens. The idea being people will actually put their cardboard, paper, plastic, sandwich wrappers and plastic cups into the recycling waste.  Oh how wrong!  Apparently it's too difficult when two bins are side by side to decide what to do so it's easier to chuck it all in the general rubbish.

This is annoying.

Now I'm not sure if I'm getting annoyed because it's not being recycled or just because I'm a bit of a stickler for the rules and want things to be put where they should be. (I do not have any type of needing to keep everything tidy issues) The problem is; I keep ranting about it at work. So now I think people are putting the recycling in the general waste because it winds me up and in some perverted way it gives them some sort of enjoyment to watch me pulling rubbish out of the bin moaning.

I'm stuck in a never ending loop.

Flush The Bloody Toilet!

The 10 year old has been toilet trained for the past seven years, give or take a few months.

For some obscure reason he finds it impossible to remember to flush the toilet.  Or to lift the seat and wash his hands.  It drives me nuts!

I know it's not for effort on my part.  I spend a good part of my day re-directing him back to the bathroom to wipe the seat, flush the toilet and wash his hands. I'm like the toilet police.

Surely it should be like second nature by now? You do something enough you don't even think of doing it, it just happens. Muscle memory. I've driven home from the in-laws or sometimes and have no recollection of the actual journey. I could do it blindfolded. 

So why, oh why, can't he flush the bloody toilet!?