Today is my birthday, and I arrived home from work to an eerily silent house. As I looked around in mild confusion, two excited girls, one bemused little boy and one smiling childminder jumped out from behind the counter and yelled "surprise!" There was a cake on the table - this is a picture of the beautiful cake ...
Tag: work
Childcare betrayal
Breach of trust, on every level. Like thousands of people who watched Prime Time last night, I’ve spent the morning trying to focus on work but my mind keeps going back to the images of children being slammed down on mattresses, tiny toddlers being punished despite being far too young, a little girl being cursed at ...
Weighing in on childcare
As a mother to three children under six, most of my adult conversations every day are with other parents, most of whom have kids in childcare. Over the last few days, a recurring topic is the news story about RTE's Prime Time sending undercover researchers into two Dublin creches, and gathering video footage of children allegedly being mistreated. See ...
More Guilt – and Some Practical Tips for Dealing With Exhaustion at Work
It’s lunchtime and I’m under my desk having a snooze. Well not really, but that’s where I’d love to be right now, as I scribble these notes and drink my third cappuccino. My baby was up all night, and I’m beyond exhausted. OK he’s not technically a baby anymore, and it wasn’t quite all night, just 1am ...
Never tweet your heroes…
It started on Monday morning when rushing around getting ready for work, I tripped over a basket of clean washing (it was clean, somehow that matters) and sprained my finger. Just my little finger on my left hand, but oh my, the pain, and oh goodness, the ramifications. I couldn't type so work was extraordinarily unproductive ...
double standards and a nice cup of tea
I should have been in bed, it was heading towards midnight on Sunday, and I was due up at 4am to head to the airport for a work trip. As usual I was feeling 90% apprehensive - worrying about leaving the kids, anxious that the baby would wake during the night and not understand why I'm not there, certain that ...