Tag Archives: kids

On personal space

Family, LearnerMother, ,

I have been trying to kick back a bit at home lately, and not be constantly rushing around doing chores and admin. It’s all part of my trying not to sweat the small stuff, and generally trying to be a more chilled out and less stressy person to be around.

There’s been some good things about this – for example I have learnt that the world does not stop if I do not  empty the dishwasher the minute it finishes. (It does stop, a tiny bit, if the dirty dishes are not put in the dishwasher the minute the meal is over, but hey – small steps and all that.)

But one thing that is definitely NOT good about all this flipping chilling out is the vastly increased opportunities this gives my kids, big and small, to use me as some sort of human climbing frame. I mean what is with this constant bloody mauling? I cannot sit down anywhere, for one SECOND, without someone clambering all over me. I don’t mean coming for cuddles – I cherish the cuddling – it’s one of the best things about being a Mum. No, what I mean is the pulling at my hair ‘to see if it will get longer’, the fiddling with my earrings, the climbing on to my shoulders, the poking at my tummy to see if there is another baby in there (THERE IS EFFING WELL NOT), the sliding down my legs and demanding ‘giddy up horsey’.  If I happen to have the laptop, or the iPad, yes, those things that I saved up for, for bloody ages, and which, might I remind everyone in this family, are actually MINE, then without a shadow of a doubt there will be a head pushing its way under my arm or over my shoulder to see what I am doing, and if I am not doing it quick enough, then a hand swiping at the screen ‘to help, because I know how to do it quicker than you, because you’re quite old’ – yeah, THANKS.

Sometimes I wonder if there is some sort of magnetic force field around me. It does not matter how happily ensconced and absorbed they are, the nanosecond that my tired backside comes within an inch of a seat of any description (yes, this does include the loo seat – note to self – BUY LOCK)…as I was saying, my ass, a sitting device, line ’em up and it’s like one of those reversing sensors go off on my kids’ heads. BEEEEP she’s lowering herself BIPBIPBIP oh no, false alarm, she forgot her beer, BEEEP she’s back BEEEP it looks like we’ll have docking this time without any further hitches,  BEEEEP she’s braced for impact  BEEEEPBEEEPBEEEP and she’s down! And not one second after the P of the final BEEEP and they all appear, literally from nowhere, they just come out of the walls or something, ready for some pawing/pulling/poking action on whatever part of me they get to first. FFS.

This grates a bit, as the day goes on. Sometimes I get to the evening and I feel that if I come into physical contact with one more living creature, that I might actually implode. This is bad news for the cat, who waits till they’re all in bed before slinking in and demanding fuss from me; it’s also bad news for the Husband, though at least they can console each other whilst shooting hurt and mournful looks at me. As long as they are doing it from the other side of the room, that’s just fine. Get any closer and I might get violent.

Is it just my kids? Do they grow out of it?? Or should I resign myself to the fact that nothing, NOTHING, not even my elbows FFS, are mine any more?

 

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MummyBarrow

On bigger being better – or not?

Family, LearnerMother, School, ,

It’s the last day of school today. In some ways it was much like the last day of every Summer term – over excited kids, Year 6’s full of swagger on the yard with their autographed shirts, an after-school picnic in the park across the road, reflections on another year of their precious childhood having flown by. But this year things had an extra layer of poignancy – today was the last day that our kids will go to school at their current site. When they go back in September, they’ll be moving to a brand spanking new, purpose built school – a school with adventure play equipment on the yard, built in whiteboard/computer screens in every class, and – get this – targets in the urinals, which change colour upon being hit accurately! (I may just consider one of those for when we get our house done next year…)

The kids are pretty chilled about the big move now. What had been worrying them most was the fact that their classes would be split and mixed with the equivalent year group from their sister school, which is also moving to the new site. Once they’d found out which of their friends would be in their new classes, and which teachers they’d be having, they seemed reassured and, apart from grumbling about the whole seven minutes longer it’ll take us to walk, haven’t really mentioned the move since.

There are so many positive things about this move. The new building will be amazing, compared to the current tiny, overcrowded site. There’ll be all sorts of opportunities for the kids – my biggest boy is excited that he might be able to take drumming lessons which would have been an absolute no-go where they are now, because there wasn’t any room for a drum kit, and certainly nowhere that it could go without being heard in every single classroom! The school dinners will be prepared on site rather than shipped in; the kids won’t have to be bussed elsewhere for sports; there’ll be a breakfast club and after school activities on site. Best of all for us, there’ll be a new nursery unit which my littlest boy will be going to in the mornings – in practical terms alone that makes our mornings a lot easier.

All this good stuff, and yet I can’t help feeling really, really sad about the change, because despite all the new facilities and opportunities, I feel like much of the stuff that I value as a parent will be disappearing.

Mostly, it’s to do with size. I love the fact that the school is one form entry. It means all the kids know each other, all the teachers know all the kids, and it’s easy to find and get to know the parents of the kids’ friends. Everyone congregates on the tiny yard before and after school, where we can catch up, arrange playdates, find out all the stuff our own kids don’t tell us, and also speak to the class teachers informally and easily. At the end of the day it’s not unusual to see kids still playing on the yard while their parents gossip, even half an hour or so after school has finished. This feels to me like a primary school should be – a sort of small, safe stepping stone to the big wide world.

The new school will be a different story completely – with a three form entry, it’s billed to be the biggest primary school in Wales. The logistics of such a large school dictate a very different beginning and end to the school day – we’ll be dropping our kids off at one of three gates (according to their age) rather than all in one place; though there is a lovely playground, it’s not clear whether parents and younger kids will have access to it after school or whether we’ll be encouraged to simply pick up and leave; and also I imagine it is going to be much more difficult to touch base with teachers informally. It just feels as if the small, family atmosphere, that admittedly can be a bit stifling at times but is generally, I think, A Good Thing for a primary school, will be extremely hard to replicate at the new site.

I am sure that tomorrow I will wake up feeling less melancholy about all this. And I do have to keep reminding myself that none of these things which are bothering me are worrying the kids in the slightest. It’s just going to be a new way of doing things, that’ll take a bit of getting used to. I guess, as a community of parents, we can simply regroup in a different way – we might need to be a bit more creative (monthly pub night, anyone?) And I am sure there are advantages to being in a large school that aren’t yet apparent. It’s just that right now, at this very moment, I am not 100% sure that bigger will necessarily be better.

 

On Welsh Medium Education/Ar Addysg Cyfrwng Cymraeg

LearnerMother, Learning Welsh, Welsh Medium Education, , , , , ,

When I make choices for my children, it’s usually with the knowledge that such choices are reversible if need be. I chose to enrol my daughter in ballet at 4 as she was forever pirouetting around the house – it became clear fairly quickly that she enjoyed pirouetting at her own pace, for her own games, but was not remotely interested in learning how to pirouette properly. Fine – we stopped ballet, sold the tutu, and nobody’s any the worse off. (Well, unless you count the astronomical cost of a couple of terms lessons…)  Other choices I make, I am 100% confident in my reasons for making them, so they don’t need to be reversible. Like swimming – that’s one of my non-negotiables – they all have swimming lessons, whether they like it or not, because ultimately it’s something that could save their life.

But some choices aren’t clear cut, like swimming, or reversible, like spending stupid amounts of money on ballet kit (bitter? not me!). And the biggest one I have come up against so far is choosing Welsh-medium education. If you live outside Wales, that means exactly what it says on the tin – all lessons, activities and socialising happen through the medium of Welsh.

It’s not such an unusual choice as some of our friends over the bridge think; according to Wikipedia nearly a quarter of primary school children, and over a fifth of secondary school kids, attend Welsh medium education. Many of these children come from homes where Welsh is not the mother tongue, however the theory is that because they start hearing and communicating in Welsh from such a young age, they will grow up to be fully bilingual by the time they leave school.

It didn’t seem that tricky a choice at the time, to be honest. We have chosen to make our home here, so it seemed sensible to give our children the opportunity to communicate in whichever language they choose as they grow older. I did quite a lot of reading around the subject, all of which pointed to positive outcomes for children raised bilingually, particularly in terms of the ability to pick up other languages competently in later life. The local Welsh medium school had an excellent reputation and an inspection report to match. And last but not least, there is an emotional connection for me to Wales and the Welsh language – I remember as a child my lovely Grandad (from Maesteg) telling me sadly that the nobody really used the language any more – and I often think now, how happy he would be to know that Welsh can be heard again throughout Wales, and how proud he would be that his great-grandchildren are Welsh speakers.

I did have doubts and questions – Would I be able to help with homework? What if my child couldn’t cope? Would my child feel weird coming from a home where Welsh wasn’t the main language? I took every opportunity I could to talk to other parents, both English and Welsh speaking and on balance, felt reassured by their answers, so we enrolled our kids in Welsh education, and I started learning Welsh in earnest (you can read more about my trials and tribulations as a Welsh Learner here). And what seems like about 5 minutes later, my biggest boy is over half way through his time in primary school, my daughter is about to go into year 2 (that’s infant 3 in old money) and my baby is starting at the school’s new nursery unit in September.

There have been some lessons along the way. I started out trying to communicate with the class teachers in Welsh – I figured it was only fair if I was making the kids learn that they should see me trying too. Yeah, dropped that pretty quick after it once took ten minutes and more gesticulating than a bookie on race day to make myself understood on some banal matter, while a class of five year olds waited patiently to be led into class. I also went through a phase of only speaking Welsh to the kids for the first hour or so after school – but they were so tired from speaking it all day that they’d run home and hide in the shed rather than be subjected to yet more. And I also really, really tried to communicate in Welsh with other parents on the yard – but apart from the fact that it makes me feel like a muppet, in a typical Welsh conversation I miss 30-50% of what’s being said, which makes it hard to take part in any meaningful way, and besides, what if I missed some really JUICY gossip??

Aside from my comedy efforts, the kids have become pretty proficient, and when they have friends around, will happily socialise in whichever language is dominant in that particular situation. They’ll also compete with each other to help me with my Welsh homework, and are equally at home watching Cyw or Stwnsh as they are with Cbeebies and CBBC.

I am not sure however that they are fluent – listening to them, they both use a lot of English words in everyday speech. This doesn’t worry me so much with the younger ones – YET – but as I mentioned before, my eldest is over half way through primary school now and it worries me that his Welsh vocab still seems to have big gaps in it. These holes tend to be around everyday words, which although they are very common, might well not come up in a school setting – for instance not long ago he asked me the Welsh word for shower. So now I am in a massive panic and keep trying to randomly introduce words for other basic items that he may not have come across in school just so I can be sure he knows them. Gah. And although he’s been learning to read in Welsh for four years, and in English for just nine months, he is clearly much happier reading English than Welsh. Well it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the more a child reads, the better their vocabulary gets, so I’m walking a constant tightrope trying to encourage Welsh books over English books, while not trying to squash his slowly developing enjoyment of reading for its own sake.

The trouble is, I have no idea if this is normal for an eight year old or not. I should make it absolutely clear that I have no grumbles or worries about the quality of educational or pastoral care and support my kids receive at school. But should I be worried that his Welsh vocab is smaller than his English? I don’t know. Will this have implications for his being able to express himself properly in written and oral work when he gets to secondary school? I don’t know. He is very good at Maths – but will he be able to reach his potential once more complicated concepts are introduced which require more mastery of language to understand?  No – I don’t know the answer to that either. Am I just adding another layer of difficulty on to his school life that he could do without?  Possibly. All these questions, and more, are constantly swimming around my head.

We’re currently waiting for the new National Test results in literacy and numeracy. As there are tests in both English and Welsh, I hope they will give us a steer on whether he is holding his own in both languages or not. I really, really hope that he is. But if he’s not – what then?  Switching to English school, now or at secondary level, would be drastic for a child who doesn’t cope well with change and who is has only recently begun to grow into himself socially. It’s a nightmare to even begin to work out what the least worst scenario is here.

I would love to hear from any parents who have faced the same worries, and how it turned out for you – and I’d especially like to hear from folk who went though Welsh medium education themselves, and their thoughts on it now. Feel free to comment below, or tweet or mail me.

Diolch!