5 things I got completely wrong about starting school

Office Mum : pencils

When my first child started school two years ago, everyone said it would be a big change. I didn’t exactly disbelieve them, but really, I thought, how big could it possibly be? Unsurprisingly, I got it completely wrong. 1. School is just the next step after crèche, right? What I thought: She’s been in crèche for a couple of ...

Cry me a river (and then some)

I haven't stopped crying for two days - this is only slightly more crying than usual; fueled by goodbyes to teachers and to pre-school and to another chunk of childhood. I'm a crier. Anything sets me off. Some days, everything sets me off. Like yesterday. It started early, when a friend told me she is expecting her ...

School costs & the double-income contradiction

This week, the Irish Parenting Bloggers are writing about back-to-school costs, a topic that's causing frustration for some and fear for many more around the country this week.  In our house, we are at the early stages of the school life-cycle; we have just one of our three in school, and she's going into senior infants. ...

the do’s and don’ts of starting school

School's out for summer, and for parents all over the country it's a significant milestone in any year. For our family, until now, this time of year meant just two things: lighter traffic in the morning and holidays jumping to twice the price. But for the first time, we experienced end-of-term properly as my junior infant finished her ...

a chip off the (not so old) block

Today we went to a birthday party - all five of us. My eldest has been giving out about this upcoming birthday party for the last two weeks, saying she wouldn't know anyone, she'd be older than all the other kids (the birthday girl is a friend of my four year old), she'd have nothing to ...