Coffee in one hand, keys in the other, I lock the car and make my way up the street towards the gates - not too early and not too late. I continue on into the school-yard and scan the area. Some familiar faces, standing together in a group. Mums from one of the other classes ...
I get to be a stay-at-home mum once a week, so I know exactly what it's like. No, not really. In fact not at all. My one day per week of SAHM-dom is Friday, so it's not quite a representative example of true stay-at-home parenting. On Friday, the traffic is lighter, the moods are lighter, ...
Babysitting. Something about which I have vivid memories; a teenage part-time-job. And now it's come full circle, as what seems like five minutes later, I'm all grown-up and paying a teenager to mind my kids. Having had three childminders (counting the runaway one) and about forty different creche minders (high turnover), I didn't expect that leaving the kids ...
The Lent of my childhood in 1980s Ireland was driven by a complex set of rules and norms, some of which I've listed below: 1. "Giving up sweets" had many interpretations. It could in fact exclude crisps, cake and in extreme cases, even chocolate. And chocolatey sweets, like Minstrels, which were technically deemed to be chocolate ...
"Look at you in your gorgeous dress!" I said to my friend's five-year-old daughter, then remembered, too late, that I'm trying to avoid telling little girls that they're beautiful. This was prompted by a Huff Post article I read a few months ago that suggested asking little girls about a book they've recently read instead of ...
It was going to be the best Christmas ever. We say that every year of course, and every year we mean it. But last year was definitely going to be the best Christmas ever. We had planned everything in tiny detail - not remembering any of that "if you want to make God laugh, tell him ...
"I try hard not to compromise the kind of mother I want to be, by not letting work encroach on the children’s time. But inevitably, deadlines need to be met" Next up, in this series of interviews with mothers, is Carmel Harrington, a sales manager turned stay-at-home-mother and now a published author. She is actually living the ...
"I think once you become a parent, guilt is inevitable" "I often feel like I am present physically but trying to work on something myself while doing homework/cooking dinner etc. I feel like I may be around my children a lot of the ...
My third child is discovering nursery rhymes. For the first time ever, I sang Baa Baa Black Sheep for him this week - he will be two years old soon, so this is not something to boast about. I also showed him Round and Round the Garden for the first time - he loves it. And ...
The perpetuation of so-called mummy-wars assumes that there is a distinct split between just two types of mothers: those who go out to work in paid employment and those who stay at home with their children. Black and White. Opposite ends of the spectrum. Apparently. And it has reared it's head again this week, with the term ...