It’s been nice to spend some quality time just with Nairn recently with him starting an intensive block of swimming lessons last week. Findlay goes away to his Dad’s at the weekend, Erica goes to her dancing class with Bob on a Saturday but Nairn is just generally content to plod along and go with the flow. Although his tantrums are fairly epic, Nairn on the whole is a pretty easy-going laid back kind of chap. So – Monday through Thursday we had to go to a pool in the next town over and every day at the exact same little tunnel Nairn would say, “Who turned the lights out?!” in an incredulous voice because he knows it makes me laugh.

Why am I telling you this?

Nairn tells me I’m beautiful all the time. He tells me that he loves Greer but not Erica because Erica annoys him, steals his toys and hurts him, until I tell him that it makes me sad that he doesn’t love his sister then he changes his perspective to make me happy. When I’m grumpy, he calls my name until I look at him and then he flashes his amazing big grin, winks and blows me a kiss. He asked me a few months ago what planet my brother lives on and I laughed so hard that now if he thinks I’m upset he asks me again, to make me laugh. He is so loving and so conscientious.

But last week I read this article and sat with my mouth agape, a brick plummeting slowly from my breast to the pit of my stomach as I identified Nairn’s behaviour in every word written by another Mother. Some of you might remember that around the time of my breakdown Nairn’s issues were so bad that I’d called in Social Services to help us. Their solution was to fire us onto a positive parenting class that I was extremely reticent about. I was so against the idea of Nairn’s issues being down to our parenting that I went along, certain they’d tell me nothing I didn’t already know but I was very pleasantly surprised. Armed with new tactics, we set about challenging Nairn’s tantrums with reward charts and different reactions and to a point it worked. We thought we’d solved our issues until his assessment for early entry to school.

In Scotland if a child turns five years old by February 28th they start school the preceding August. January & February babies can defer entry for a year, March-July birthdays can apply for early admission but the child must complete a test to see if they are ready. One of the tests Nairn had to do was to sort a number of building blocks by colour – a task I know he could do with his eyes shut – but as it was such a boring task, he elected instead to build a rather impressive transformer with his blocks. Let me remind you again here that Nairn turned four years old in March. Lego is his ‘thing’ and it amazes me the grasp he clearly has on engineering. Nairn is a little Lego professor and that scares me.

With Bob being diagnosed as severely dyslexic (which he writes about under this tag, work from the bottom up) – the second top ‘band’ of dyslexia – we were made aware that our children could have a genetic predisposition towards it. Dyslexia is a spectrum disorder.

I have fought and lost when it comes to having Nairn assessed because I am as certain as I can be that something is not quite right with the way he processes his feelings. He simply cannot relate to other people on an emotional level and hence the tantrums and certainty that he is hated whenever he has a falling out with a friend or sibling.

I wish I knew what to do. With Bob having fallen through the cracks in such a spectacular manner I am quite terrified that Nairn will be written off as a child with a neurotic mother rather than a child with possible support requirements.

Posted under family

I’m a Mum to four kids who seem to migrate towards brightly coloured plastic tat, so the Early Learning Centre has been a frequently visited shop for us over the last ten years. I’ve always been relatively impressed by their range of art supplies like air drying clay, paint and suchlike but the range of toys left me cold – primarily because it seemed to be extremely pricey for our salary range but also because the toys stereotyped by gender left me feeling enraged.

I have two sons and two daughters. I spend a significant amount of my parenting time assuring my amazing children that they can be anything they choose to be even though the Fawcett Society has highlighted that women working full-time still face being paid 17% less than their male counterparts on an hourly basis – a figure that rises to 20% if that woman happens to be from an ethnic minority, 36% if she works part-time and 45% if she both works part-time and works in London. Doesn’t that disgust you? It appalls me and I don’t think it matters if you’re a feminist or not, this pay gap affects every single working person out there. It’s revolting that in this day and age where we’re all supposed to be forward-thinking, liberal and equal that it’s acceptable for the pay gap to still be tangible.

With that in mind, it’s not like I expect the toy companies to pick up the slack for the pay gap but – and this is a big but – this kind of gender stereotyping begins at such an early age and the Early Learning Centre’s marketing is just one admittedly major example of this. Let me show you a webpage from the ELC’s retail site (click for embiggenisation):

Just in case you’re a complete thicket, I’ve highlighted the relevant parts and following the ELC’s lead I’ve even used the appropriate colours. Quite simply, if you have a daughter she’s clearly a princess who aspires to be a nurse or a ballerina. If you have a son, he can be a doctor because of course it’s a man’s job. Right from pre-school levels our children are being segregated into traditional gender roles before they really have a concept of gender constructs themselves.

You know what else pisses me off? And these are simply examples from presents our kids have been bought – a pink shopping till and basket because obviously only women do the shopping or work in retail. A blue multistorey garage since only boys like cars. They even have a pink GLOBE just in case our daughters are too female to look at a regular one. Heaven forbid, eh?

In the interests of fairness, I emailed the ELC yesterday saying:

I have to be honest straight off the bat and say that my post is going to be criticising the shift over the last 10 years in the ELC’s product range. I have personally avoided ELC since giving birth to my daughter 3 years ago as I realised how heavily gender stereotyped ELC chooses to be and the final straw for me today was seeing this page which tells me that my daughter can be a nurse but only my son can be a doctor.
The product range reinforces traditional gender roles – pink microwaves, dolls prams and kitchen sets for girls, dinosaurs and train sets for boys which contradicts the UK educational system’s approach to free play and I would greatly appreciate a statement with regards to this concern.

Their spokesperson responded today with this:

‘Come down to Early learning Centre and see for yourself the huge range of toys in an assortment of colours. Customers can choose a red kitchen, a blue kitchen, a blue cash register, a yellow dolls house or a gorgeous farm

Our photography features boys ironing, girls playing with space aliens, boys playing with dolls, boys cooking and pushing buggies, girls building and playing with remote control insects. We offer anyone who wants to buy toys so much to choose from that no one should feel disappointed when they walk into our stores.

which comprehensively answered my query. Or not.

I’m interested to know how other parents feel about it. Do you identify as feminist? Do you agree with what I’m saying or do you think I’m overreacting?

Posted under for the kids

A throwaway comment by me on twitter last night led to a really interesting conversation between about 15 of my friends list, split almost exactly in half. Half who agreed with me and half who thought I was being judgemental. The comment?

Now, the difficulty with making comments like this on twitter is the restriction of having 140 characters to make a clear, concise and considered point. I immediately faced fair criticism. “Not everyone can breastfeed” replied more than one commenter. “What business is it of yours?” asked another. Several told me I was being very judgemental. Each of them had a valid point and thus I wanted to explore this a little more both within the context of breastfeeding and within parenting at large.

Firstly, although I breastfed all of mine I didn’t feed any of them for the two years recommended by the World Health Organisation. Findlay fed for four months before starting solids – as was the recommendation at that time – and stopped breastfeeding at 6 months old when he discovered it came faster from a bottle. Nairn managed three months before I had to switch him onto a bottle to administer medication for the reflux that was steadily ruining our mother-baby relationship.

I have never been able to pump more than 2oz at a time and – exhausted with running around after a 4 year old and a fractious, pukey baby – I gave up. I never did get over that and constantly felt guilty about it until my vastly improved breastfeeding relationship with Greer gave me a little closure.. The longest I managed to feed any of my children was 9 months with each of the girls which I was pretty damn proud of, particularly because many of you will remember the battles that we faced – and indeed still face – with Erica’s health issues. Greer stopped breastfeeding when – like Findlay – she realised the bottle dispensed it more quickly.

I understand that breastfeeding can be hard and that for the most part, I had it easy. I persevered through cracked & peeling nipples, through sleep deprivation with a baby who fed all night, through being made to feel a failure because my baby wasn’t gaining weight. I persevered through it because – as we all do – I wanted desperately to do what was best for my children.

And now? My eldest son who was bottlefed for 6 months is a superhealthy genius. My second son who was bottlefed for 9 months rarely catches so much as a cold. My eldest daughter who was breastfed for 9 months is allergic to everything, has eczema and is under observation for suspected asthma while my youngest daughter who was breastfed for 9 months is never seen without a runny nose. Now I can read as well as the next person. I know that breastfeeding protects from breast cancer, promotes intelligence, increases physical contact between mother & baby and therefore promotes the emotional bond. In fact I’m almost certain I heard some self-proclaimed “boob nazi” types declare that world peace could be achieved through mass breastfeeding. You may have gathered that I am somewhat sceptical about the claims around the amazing power of breastfeeding – sure it’s great for the baby, designed specifically for them but I doubt any kid has reached the end of his education thinking, “Well I’m sure I’d have done better if only my Mother had breastfed me.”

I understand that breastfeeding versus bottlefeeding is a wholly personal choice. I have no issues with that whatsoever and I would never intentionally push my feelings towards breastfeeding my children onto another mother because it is a personal choice. Yet, when I saw a photo yesterday of a brand new Mum in hospital feeding her baby with a bottle I had such a visceral reaction to it that I went straight to twitter. Through debating it over last night I realised that my main issue was around bonding because for me, bringing my brand new baby to my breast and watching as my milk nourished and comforted was the “WOW. I REALLY LOVE THIS KID” moment. It was when it suddenly became real that I was a Mum with a teeny tiny person to be responsible for. It makes me feel really sad that the breastfeeding rates in this country are so low and the photo that I saw made me as a Mother feel frustrated at whatever had caused that mother to opt for breastfeeding. Again I will reiterate that I know not everyone can breastfeed but I struggle with the fact that some parents choose not to. I wonder what the breastfeeding rates would be if breastfeeding support was funded to even 10% of what is spent on formula advertising. Would things be different?

Is this judgemental? Well of course it is. I am making a judgement on the actions of another person based on no information or facts whatsoever. Is it a bad thing to be judgemental, particularly around parenting issues? I personally don’t think so. I believe that the vast majority of people are judgemental in some facet – whether that’s over discipline issues, what clothes our children wear, how they behave (and I don’t mean tantrumming) – and in fact, I’d go as far as to say that this parenting judgementalism is what individually encourages us to raise our standards of parenting. Who hasn’t seen a child being screeched at or smacked in public? I know I have and my immediate reaction is, “That poor child. I swear I’ll never treat my kids like that.” For me, the subject of feeding babies is a similar judgement and reaction. I can still remember the first time I ever saw someone breastfeeding – it was my parents’ friend “Auntie” Linda, breastfeeding her first daughter. I remember the bond between them being almost tangible, the two of them staring into each other’s eyes – and I compare that to watching my Mum bottlefeed my siblings and how clinical it seemed to be with little physical contact. Thus, when I see a teeny tiny newborn I feel a pang of sadness that this mother-child pair will never experience that intimacy.

So, what do you think? Do you think you’re a judgemental parent? Do you agree with what I’ve said or do you think I’m talking havers?

Posted under parenting

I spent yesterday at the CyberMummy conference – an experience I’ll write more about later this week – and as we mostly only “knew” each other online we had little badges to wear around our neck with the title of our blog and our name on. Of course, many of you might not be aware that the title of this blog is “Adventures of a Lady in Training” or what it means to me so after answering that a few times yesterday, I thought I’d share. This is likely to be long, intimately personal and full of emotion. It’s the first time I’ve felt that I have the right to share this element of my life in such a public manner and I hope that I can do it justice without hurting anyone.

I’ve written 700 words of this, deleted it, written 376 words and deleted that. I can’t tell my story because I have an innate fear of hurting other people, even if I’m the one who has been hurt. I had a fairly bogstandard “nobody understands me” kind of teenage experience and left home/was kicked out a month after my 16th birthday – the day after my Higher English exam and the day before my Higher Maths exam. Whether it was the less-than-stellar home life I’d experienced or simply my hormones being crazy insane I had a longing to be a Mum myself. This is something I’ve talked at length about with my friends, I have always – for as long as I can remember – been broody and even now with four children who test my every boundary I don’t feel that longing has been satisfied. As a result, when I met Findlay’s Dad it suddenly became imperative that I had a baby. Looking back we had a seriously dysfunctional relationship – one that took us both a long time to get over – but when you’re 18 you know everything better than everyone else around you, don’t you? I discovered I was pregnant with Findlay and that weekend, discovered that my parents were splitting up because my Mum had been having a relationship with someone else.

I think you can only understand the hurt and pain that comes out of that kind of marriage breakup if you’ve been a part of it. My sisters were only 14 & 13 and my brother Callum was 9 the weekend my Mum left. I’m sitting here with tears streaming down my face as I remember walking into my parents house seconds after the kids had been told what was happening. The ramifications were and have been widespread but as I have joked since it was almost the perfect time to tell our families that I was pregnant because the heat was truly off us. Selfish? Perhaps, but when you’re 18 and think you know everything you don’t quite see it like that.

Findlay was born 3 months after my 19th birthday and right from the off I felt under pressure to be better than any other parent because I was so young. Findlay’s Dad came home from work one day and I suggested that we get married to solidify our family unit and he agreed, so when Findlay was 4 months old we did. And when Findlay was 9 months old – the day before my 20th birthday – he left. We have a very good relationship these days – in fact I’d almost go as far as to say I count him and his lovely partner as friends – but I can’t and won’t ever forgive him for leaving us like that even if I have some empathy for his reasoning. I did not cope with my parents’ separation well and expended a lot of energy being angry at my Mum, supportive of my Dad and just being there for my siblings which was obviously to the detriment of our relationship. For the next three years I was 100% certain we’d reunite, which was a deeply unhealthy mindset to have when you’re getting involved in new relationships. We would fight, threaten one another with legal action and then put on a brave face in front of Findlay because the one thing I was so, so certain of was that I WOULD not and COULD not have Findlay ever feel the way I did when I was growing up. I felt like an oddity, a spare part. Like I didn’t belong – to an extent, I still feel like this – and it’s damaging. I wanted better for my son.

I started keeping a blog at Blurty and then Livejournal not long after Findlay’s Dad and I split up but when I met Bob and realised what a proper healthy partnership should be like, everything changed. Some of you will have done the maths yourself but we delivered Nairn – a pregnancy we both planned and dearly wanted – into our family 13 months after our first kiss. Erica followed 14 months later and I decided that I wanted to catalogue my “training” from being just a silly 18 year old girl who thought she knew it all to a grown up lady who could keep a house and work and parent and sew and bake and do all the things that a perfect lady could do. I wanted to prove to each and every single person who had ever wrote me off as a “daft wee lassie” that in actual fact, I was so much more than that.

Last week I wrote about making a gift for Findlay’s teacher and I also gave her a knitted bookmark like this one. I wrote a card thanking her for her work, added a quote that I liked and sent Findlay into school on the last day – not expecting to receive anything back. But I did.

I cried when I read this. I’m crying again now. I don’t doubt that Findlay’s teacher had a stack of cards to write out that day and that she perhaps didn’t necessarily plan out her thank you, but her words gave me validation and I finally feel that I’m not just a daft wee lassie anymore, I’ve graduated into the class of “doing not too bad actually”. And perhaps it’s time to rename my adventures and take the training wheels off.

Posted under me, parenting

Right now I’m sitting on my sofa, watching my baby – who I know will be my last baby – walk across my living room. Greer took four steps the week before her first birthday becoming my earliest walker but retired this new skill for a month so she could perfect it, and perfect it she has. She took her first unprompted solo steps at the entrance to the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel last week and now spends a significant portion of her day simply wandering around the house as if it’s the most exciting place in the world. Which I suppose to her it is, being able to explore it all on her lonesome.

She’s been fairly verbal for as long as I can remember, always a very babbly chatty baby and her babbles have become more distinguishable. Her first ‘word’ was “WOOF” directed at next door’s dalmatian with her second being “HIYA”, a greeting she liberally expresses to passers-by whilst standing hammering at the window of our living room. In fact, her growing garrulity has created a new bond between her and Nairn who was ecstatic that his was the first of her siblings names that she has perfected and who now comes running as soon as he hears her.

She’s got her first tooth, had her first haircut, slept through the night for the first time (actually she’s almost always done that!), gone swimming for the first time and I know that there are so many more ‘firsts’ ahead of her. I do, I know this. But – and oh, there’s always a but – I have to admit to shedding more than a few tears over the last couple of months as it’s hit me: I will never again see a child of mine crawling for the first time. Walking. Breastfeeding. Talking. Smiling. Seeing her drinking out a juicebox with a straw whilst on holiday was a complete “What on EARTH…” moment. It’s such a bittersweet period for me, possibly exacerbated by my clearout of baby paraphernalia last week when I handed over to my pregnant sister every baby item Greer has outgrown. I needed to do it – God knows we need the space – and packing the baby walker, bottles & steriliser, baby bath didn’t bother me in the slightest but. But but but. It’s all just really real, now. I have no need for them anymore. I will never again have a need for them again.

I’ve been told to treat it like a grieving process which makes sense to me. I’m grieving for what I have been blessed with but which is gone – that precious time which I feel I muddled through in a fog of postnatal depression, breastfeeding and sleep deprivation. When everything that the baby could ever need, be that love, reassurance, milk or a clean bum came from me. Does that make sense? Watching Greer develop her sea legs has been amazing and I’ve spent a lot of time grinning at her perseverance this week but it’s been heartbreaking too.

It’s not that I grudge Greer – or indeed, Findlay Nairn and Erica – because I’m thrilled beyond measure that they’re growing and developing little personalities. I am just finding the contrast of pride and self-pity to be a bit of a strange one. Do any other parents feel this way?

Having her first Smore. Thanks to everyone who has messaged me asking how the kids are – Greer is still pretty unwell, but Nairn & Erica are well enough to have gone back to nursery today.

Posted under parenting

This time last week we were getting organised to come home from our amazing holiday at Eurocamp’s Château Les Eaux campsite and I promise I will be that boring friend who shows you every single snap they took on their holiday! It was absolutely fantastic and the kids were absolutely distraught to be leaving.

But – and there’s always a but, isn’t there? – about 15 minutes after we got off the ferry at Portsmouth, Erica barfed all over the car. I’ve never seen anything like it, there was no warning, no, “Mummy my not very well”*, nothing. Just Erica calling for Huey, Dewie and Louie as she performed the technocolour yawn from one end of the car to the other. Did I mention that we were 15 minutes into a 438 mile trip? Poor Erica, we ceremoniously stripped her in a layby as she proudly exclaimed, “My done a good sick!” – and oh, dear reader she had. I’m not going to elaborate because I’m sure that you’ve all been party to a vomit-in-car incident and we were lucky enough that she only got herself, her seatbelt, Bob’s backpack and the PVC weekend bag so it was fairly easily cleaned up.

We’d just got off an 8 hour ferry trip – during which I had accidentally given Erica a carton of fruit juice containing pineapple which she’s allergic to – so we assumed that she was either having an allergic reaction or she was travel sick. We thought nothing else of it and she was absolutely fine after that so as far as we were concerned, that was that.

We got back to our house at 2.30am with me having consumed several quad-shot lattes along the route. The kids were dumped in their beds and next morning were shipped off to school and nursery to give me a chance to catch up on my work and sleep. No dice – an hour later we were phoned by the nursery and asked to pick Greer up as she’d had a couple of incidences of dire rear. Diarrhoea at nursery = not allowed back for 48 hours. Ho hum. I assumed again that it was just a dodgy tummy because of all the travelling but by Thursday Greer had started blowing chunks too and wasn’t managing to keep down any liquids, so off we went to our local hospital for a night of observation.

Yesterday Greer perked up, managed to keep down quarter of a banana and drink some dioralyte. We put her to bed and ROOKIE MISTAKE gave her a bottle of milk. This morning, Bob said her cot was like that scene from Trainspotting. We all know the one I mean.

So today started just beautifully. I decided that I didn’t have the energy to have a shower so ran a bath and after bathing Greer and handing her out to Bob, I propped my laptop up on the table beside me (What?! I’m not the only person who does this, right?!) only to hear Nairn crying and shouting, “My MOUTH! My MOUTH!” which such panic and upset that I assumed he’d bitten his tongue. Bob – who bear in mind was clutching a just-bathed Greer – said, “Nairn come here and let me see” and he did. He walked over to about a foot away from Bob, opened his mouth and chundered in projectile fashion à la Exorcist all over Bob, Greer, the sofa, my CLEAN LAUNDRY and the floor. There was a veritable Lake Spew created in the middle of my living room. Again we hark back to Trainspotting.

And do you know how I reacted when I heard Bob going, “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” and Greer screaming? I leapt out of the bath, ran downstairs naked and soaking wet, stood in the doorway of the living room and laughed for a good 30 seconds solid. Howled. It would appear that I’ve developed quite the streak for inappropriate laughter, eh? Incidentally I should  mention that this is not the first time that one of my children has vomited on another. When the three eldest shared a room for a little while, Erica stood up in her cot and blew chunks over the bar. It just so happened that Nairn had decided he was sleeping on the floor that night and even now, a good two years on, I’m giggling away at the memory of his wee sleepy puke-covered head looking around in bewilderment trying to work out what the hell just happened.

I haven’t mentioned the third P – pee – but ONE of my allegedly continent children has peed through every pair of pants she owns and leaves me a little puddle on the bathroom floor every morning. Luckily the dog licks that up so I don’t have to worry about slipping in it. I think I might go barf myself.

I think we should start a list of things that nobody warns you about pre-children. What do you think? If you’ve got a post, add it into the Linky below and we’ll see how far we get. Bagsy not doing lochea!

*”Mummy, my not very well” accompanied by the saddest puppy-dog eyes you ever did see is Erica’s standard retort when you ask her to do something she has no interest in, like have a shower or go to bed.

**I hope you’re impressed at how many different ways to describe being sick I managed to wheedle in to this blog entry!

Posted under family

I know I don’t really style this as a “Mummy blog” so you’ll have to forgive me, but this post has been brewing for a while and I think it’s time to let it all out.

Do you remember receiving the chain email that talked about lead paint being used on cots and running around on your bike from sun-up to sundown all Summer and how previous generations have been unsurpassed in terms of problem solving and teamwork? I read that many moons ago with the usual click-read-delete that happens with emails with a subject line starting FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: but something within it has resonated recently.

Back in the olden days when I was but a lass my siblings and I spent pretty much every school holiday out playing with our friends, coming home occasionally for a drink or a ‘piece n jam’ and running wild the rest of the time. We were by no stretch of the imagination perfect kids but we rarely got into mischief, we were polite and most importantly we were out of our Mum’s hair.
I walked to school every day. In my primary school years it meant walking across a road outside my house, down a street and across a road outside the school. I went to boarding school for a few years but came home to start a new secondary school three miles away from home and from 2nd year to 5th year I walked to school every day and I walked home, through rain or shine. I crossed several roads and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but I was extremely fit and healthy thanks to this regular exercise which allowed me to clear my head and listen to some music on my way.
At playtime we’d run around playing tig or ‘kiss, cuddle, torture’ or skipping or football without any fear of us impaling ourselves on railings or splitting our head open on the asphalt. We’d have ‘cake & candy’ stalls where our parents would actually make things to be sold and the proceeds sent to whichever charitable cause we were collecting for at that time. When it was snowy, we went out to play wearing a coat and maybe gloves and a hat. I don’t recall anyone dying from eating a fairy cake made by someone’s parent. I don’t recall any severe injuries in the playground (unless you count the time I threw snow at Ellen Murphy and it hit her eye which swelled up. I thought her eye was going to fall out, or worse I’d get expelled from school).
I’m not making light of serious injuries because I know they happen. A boy at my eldest son’s school had an accident whilst playing football and damaged his thigh – damage that only happened because the school spent the better part of a year like a building site while a new car park was created – so I understand that health & safety rules are necessary and important. But – and it is a big but. As parents, as products of the so-called ‘free range’ age when did we get so neurotic about safety issues?
Findlay’s school holds regular cake & candy stalls where the donated items must be bought from the shop. Now I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’m buying a pack of penguins for my kid to take to school to buy back. What is the point in that?! It is removing every element of fun and enterprise from learning. The list of things they can and can’t do is long and varied but seems to serve more to protect the school from litigation than to protect the kids from danger.

Of course, this level of overprotectionism starts at a far younger age than school. A friend of mine recently told me that when she fills her car up at the petrol station she removes her two young children from their carseats to take them with her to pay before returning back to the petrol station to go through the rigmarole of putting them back in their seats. Now perhaps she has particularly well behaved children, but I genuinely can’t get my head around it. I can just see it now: I pull into the petrol station, fill the car up and open the car door. I get Erica out first and clamp her arm between my knees while I lift Greer out of her seat. I close the door and open the boot to let Nairn & Findlay out but I’m holding Erica with one hand and carrying Greer so Nairn will have to hold Findlay’s hand, except he doesn’t want to so we have a meltdown in the petrol station during which one of the toddlers pee themselves and a massive queue of cars are filled with impatient businesspeople staring at us and wishing a slow death on me.
Maybe I’m a bad parent but simply the thought of having to cajole the four of them back into their carseats is enough to put me off, and my car has this magic device called a LOCK on it so I doubt any sneak thief or wannabe paedo is going to manage to break into my car, hotwire it and drive off in the couple of minutes it takes for me to go in and pay.

The reason this is particularly getting to me right now is because Findlay is going to be nine years old in June this year. His Dad lives about eight miles away from us and there is a bus that goes from almost outside our door to almost outside his Dad’s house and I’m willing to take him on the bus to do a mock run so that he can do it himself, but most people I have suggested this to have recoiled in horror. At his age, I made an unaccompanied flight from Los Angeles to Glasgow with a layover in Boston. I regularly walked to the bus stop after school and got the bus to my Nana’s house at the other side of the city. I just don’t believe that our kids today are in any more danger than my generation were.
Unfortunately we’re becoming the products of a twofold attack against our civil liberties – one from the litigous society we are becoming and one from the media hell bent on reporting PAEDO DANGER – and this is threatening to kill off any fun activities which have an element of what could be construed as ‘danger’ to them. I genuinely feel sorry for today’s teachers because how difficult must it be to work with your charges in today’s climate?

I will keep you posted as to how the bus trip thing pans out but in the meantime I’m going to leave you with a rare photograph of my gorgeous firstborn enjoying the terribly dangerous snow.

Posted under family