Diary of an (ex)London mum

I teach for a living and I see my students at the best of times and the worst of times.  Reflecting on our shared experiences, I have translated some of these lessons to my life with my child, which I hope will help him with his journey in life. 1. Failure is not a thing to be feared.  The adjunct to this is that being the best is not a given and,  although we always try our best, we accept that our best may not always be enough.  The process is as important as the end point, because we learn from the process.  It feels bad to fail but it will pass if we learn to weather it.  In the end we are but a small part of the universe and what feels big for us is small to the universe.  Humans like to blow their own trumpet and make the things we do sound great, our achievements sound grand, we celebrate greatness, but what does it really mean in the grand scheme of things?  Probably not that much.  The thing is, as parents we want the best for our...

My environmental conscientiousness could be divided into pre-Baby and post-Baby phase.  Whilst I was always conscious of doing my bit for the planet, it was really only after Baby was born that I started to read every label, pay attention to what is recommended, and worry about what may happen if we don't collectively do enough.  I suppose I worry about his future and what the world may be like for him after we are long gone.  I also worry what sorts of chemicals we are exposing him to. We looked into nappies, weighing the difference between using re-usable ones or biodegradable ones.  We also changed all our household products based on what advice we could find.  Of the ones we have tried, these are the ones that we found and liked.   Naty : Nature Babycare nappies.  We considered using re-usable nappies but these would have had to be sent off for specialist cleaning and were too expensive and possibly would have environmental costs added on due ...

We have been toying with the idea to go camping and hill walking with Baby for a while.  He is now 6 and is a relatively active child so we thought it was time to give it a go.  We went to the Lake District over the Easter holidays and spent one week at a campsite in the Lake District.  This wasn't a camping trip like we had before.  First of all, we were unsure what to bring as we did not know how he would cope with the changeable weather.  He is generally not that worried about the cold but he had also never really been in a situation where he had been seriously exposed to the elements.  So we took a lot more than it turned out to be necessary.  It did mean that we had to be slightly more economical with what we brought for ourselves.  We also brought a few extra sleeping bags and mats as we wanted him to sleep well.  As the weather had been a bit strange lately, and there was a forecast for snow in the area we planned to go to, we booked ...

I am writing this as I am watching a BBC programme on high achieving students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, and the challenges they face on their educational journeys.  Specifically, the programme looked at students' pathway from GCSE and the decision making processes regarding higher education.  The striking thing about the three students, whose stories were portrayed on tonight's programme, was the lack of confidence that they felt in their ability to do well.  There is an overwhelming sense of responsibility of how going to university and going for their dreams may impact on their family.  Behind all of this is money.  Going to university requires money and even though the students can take out student loans to finance their studies, the enormity of the debt and the fact that they don't want to end up being a burden on their family if their dreams don't work out are barriers.  The conflict between what they want and what they think may b...

Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage.  We have been talking about helping Baby to learn for a while now and he had actually never shown much interest until recently.  About two years ago we bought him a balance bike for is birthday and, although he had taken it out occasionally, he much preferred to use his scooter.  We took him to a couple of balance bike sessions, called Veloblance , at the velodrome at the Olympic park, which he loved and kept asking to go back to, but he didn't really show all that much interest in cycling otherwise. We bought him a pedal bike for his birthday last year but made the mistake of buying one with a frame that was slightly too large for him- even though we measured his inside leg to try to determine frame size- and he didn't really take to riding it as he couldn't quite put his foot on the ground to steady himself.  So for the Summer holidays we bought a slightly smaller bike, one on which he could easily put his foot on th...