I'm sitting at the kitchen table, scrolling through Facebook while the sound of Gargamel and Papa Smurf come from the sitting room, and the smell of chorizo pasta fills the kitchen. Well, just chorizo - there's no pasta yet. Because if I put on the pasta, in ten tiny minutes I'll have to pause Gargamel ...
Has motherhood been let down by feminism? I was sent this article today and it brings up some really interesting points. The person who sent me the link told me she misses her career, but knows she’d miss her kids more if she was working full-time, so she’s staying at home for now. She feels ...
I'm doing a u-turn on playgrounds. Like, not literally driving into one in a car - if you've seen my driving, you'll know that would be even worse than it already sounds. More of a figurative u-turn - something I realised this afternoon when I was sitting in the playground with the kids. A few years ...
This week, my radio told me that my kids eat too much sugar, are obese, have far too much screen time, and that I don't let them out to play unsupervised. Ever. Well, not just me - all of us. The entire country of Ireland is filled with parents who are messing up big-time when ...
One Friday morning last autumn, sitting in a coffee shop, I finished tweaking the first three chapters of a book, attached them to an email, and hit send before I could chicken out. It felt good. Well, for at least thirty seconds until I realised I'd sent it without checking for typos. The next big dilemma was whether or not to ...
These are just my own personal essential parenting tools - they're not by any means universal - but without them, I suspect I'd be in some kind of institution at this stage. In no particular order: 1. Kids' TV TV saves my life every evening. Take yesterday for example. There were fourteen children running around my kitchen ...
It's 11.25pm on Thursday night and I've just spent five minutes scrolling through Facebook. Now I'm anxious because that's five minutes that I didn't spend doing something I should be doing, like editing the article that's due tomorrow or editing the book that's due next week. One part of me - a tiny voice - ...