Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Busy, busy, busy

Full English brunch for these two! Life is VERY busy and I don't feel like we have stopped for weeks (or is that months?) It seems like the 'to-do' list is endless and while I know we don't have to do it all at once, I have taken on the unenviable task of trying to get the Muppet to finish all the work he promised / we have paid for and that has been like pushing a mountain of water up a very steep hill. We've got to the point where I think we have got all of what we are likely to get and the rest we'd rather finish ourselves anyway. The electric gates are clearly a work of his imagination based on the gates / the electric cables he spec'd and the cheapo motor mechanism - there is no way they'll work so we have decided to not bother and source proper gates that do the job and look better as well. Knowing that we are almost at a point where we sever the ties feels very liberating. Looking back this last 6 months has been incredibly stressful and just didn...

Decluttering

Girls buying baby clothes - this could get addictive! It's Easter weekend already and we still haven't completed!! However we have made some progress, most importantly with the paperwork which has not been Steve the Builder's forte throughout this process. Stags finally got their act together and got in touch with the planning office and got an update from the Planning Officer. Apparently she is broadly happy with the application, and is prepared to pass it with only a few minor modifications which we are completely comfortable with. The Building Control Officer also came and did all of what he needed to, which means the final certificate should be issued which allows the warranty to also be issued. On our side we finally tracked down the paperwork (or more correctly got the BC Officer to come out again and do a second assessment) for the outstanding BCC on our windows (which went in 6 years ago but due to an admin error were never registered) - nothing is straightforward i...

Bank Holiday sunshine

Off to meet FiFi and Grumps for a walk  (and yes, she is on the seat) Finally after weeks of rain and cold weather, the tide has turned and we have glorious sunshine for the bank holiday weekend and half term - hooray, it's about time.  Also just in time is half term as the kids were definitely ready for a break. They have both done brilliantly settling into the school, making new friends and finding their feet in an unfamiliar environment. Izzy has just had her exam week and felt it went OK given she hadn't covered all of the syllabus, and Abi's exams start as soon as she is back next week. I hope she's done some revision as she left for Devon with Claire, Adam and Mia today and isn't back until Saturday. There is talk of looking at some of her notes but who knows. My view is that a bit of R&R will probably be at least as beneficial if not more so than cramming all week so she should take the time to relax and have some fun - she deserves it. So we packed Abi o...