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Mid week rant

It's not often I have a rant on here but I will because I want to look back in years to come and either congratulate myself on being right, or laugh at myself for being so wrong.

Yesterday I picked up the girls from school - not a normal occurrence on any day and rare for a Thursday. I got chatting to one of the Mums who I know reasonably well and she asked whether I would be going to the Year 4 drinks later. I replied no because I have to be in London this morning for a client pitch and so it's an early night for me. She then complimented me that unlike some working parents I don't have a phone permanently attached to me - I seem to be able to separate work from home. I'm clearly not perfect and there are far too many occasions where I'm juggling kids / friends / phone / emails etc but I do try and be mindful of where to draw the line. She then started to say her husband is particularly bad at this and has his phone with him even at the dinner table. I said our rule is no IPads at the table when we are eating, but then said the girls are allowed 10 minutes before school as long as they are washed, dressed, hair brushed and ready to go. We got chatting about TV - I said of course they hardly watch TV - it's all on demand these days, but I'm OK with the kind of things they watch for the most part. Currently it's Victorian Slum - no bad thing to learn about.  Glenn then said Abi loves to watch One Man and his Dog and her response - "why, that's so boring!"

And so to my rant... When I said "No, it's lovely that she wants to watch something so calm and anyway, it's what she currently wants to do when she's older", this Mum was horrified! "Don't you want her to be a doctor or something that pays well?" When I said "I want her to be happy - happy is more important than rich" she then dropped the bombshell of "so why are you wasting your time with private schooling?!?"

Luckily at this point the kids came out of school and I didn't have to explain all the reasons I choose a small, independent, balanced school for my girls, where they could develop a love of learning for the sake of building knowledge and being informed, a sense of curiosity and the confidence to go out into the world and do what makes them happy. Obviously they know they'll need to make ends meet (Izzy told me last night she will write books and sell them to pay for her horses and more books to read!), but that doesn't mean they need to live life at the crazy pace every over achiever I know does. Would I encourage them to do something that involves 4 hours of commuting every day - NO! Once you're in that cycle it's hard to get out again.

Ho hum, rant over. Abi is loving the idea that she could one day be a shepherdess. Who cares at this stage whether she eventually does or not. I wanted to own a stationery shop (lots of lovely coloured paper and pens!) - look what happened to me!

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