My Mother's Day Cards

Yay! Thanks to school I have Mothers day cards I didn't help make myself. 

I love little surprises and use any opportunity I can to let people keep secrets (the nice kind) from me at Christmas, on my birthday, Valentine's day and Mother's day.

I knew they must have making them because on Wednesday Bean had paint all over his sleeve and when I asked about it he replied;

"Mother's day cards". 

Ooops Bean, don't think you were supposed to tell me that...

So, on Friday, Ed, who is very precious about his surprises and hates them to be ruined in any way, came out of school with something stuffed inside his coat. We walked to the car as he gave Bean and I strict instructions to go straight into the kitchen when we got home. However, he must have got overexcited and when we got home, before we'd even walked through the door he asked me if I wanted it early, then gave it to me before I had a chance to answer.

Now, I'll be honest, Ed spends a fair amount of time telling me I don't love him, and he's written me notes that say something along the lines of; 

"I love you but I don't think you love me" 

So I had expected his card to be full of: 

"You don't love me, you've never even liked me, you're an asshole"

Instead, I got this...

Translation; Dear Mum, Happy Mother's Day. I love you lots, from Ed.

Bean's card was stashed in his homework bag, and when given permission to remove it, I found this.

I seriously never expected this.

When I asked for a translation of '1psent min' I literally laughed out loud and asked why on earth he'd put that. Bean is always so loving and sweet, it was a surprise to see this written in his beautifully hand-painted card. 

Apparently, it's very simple. 

The morning he wrote his card out at school was the morning I wouldn't let him have crisps for breakfast.

Mommy, you are 1 percent mean, from Henry
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now I don't need flowers or chocolates, instead I have two little boys who I know will never hold back and always be honest about their feelings, however, Ed decided it was inappropriate to write something mean in his card, which I think is an excellent notion to have at just seven. 

What great kids I have. I'm one lucky Mummy.

To Home School or to Not Home School

I’m not fed up of school.

I love school.

I am excited by all that learning. I love learning, even now. Most days I get up & start planning what I can squeeze in. I am literally desperate to learn most things; playing the ukulele, speaking Spanish, drawing, I’d love to learn to paint or sail a boat...oh my goodness I could go on & on & on.

We finally received a letter this morning telling us they’ve offered him a place in a school in exactly the opposite direction from Ed’s, so that’s helped me make up my mind about what to do with him next year.

We only started thinking about this because Bean didn’t get the school place we’d applied for at Ed’s school. The thought of stretching ourselves between two schools made me think it would be easier, and far more fun to home school him for his reception year until a place could be found for him at Ed’s school. But the more I research home education, the more interesting it is. And it’s something we spoke about before we had children, having both had rubbish experiences at school ourselves.

I constantly find myself looking around Ed’s classroom, checking out their latest projects & feeling massively inspired & slightly jealous. As I look around I always think to myself; I want to make my home like that, I want to put that on the wall, I want to spend time with my kids doing that project. They must have so much fun in there.

Am I just a massive nerd?

I'm so jealous that the teachers get to do all these awesome things with my kids and when I try on a weekend, they seem all ‘schooled out’.

When we were planning our children I never envisaged someone else teaching them this cool stuff, I thought I’d have at least a part time role in it, but at the moment there’s nothing left for me to do aside from feed them, wash them, clothe them & put them to bed. All massively important jobs obviously! But I want to do fun stuff with them too. I want to teach them how to swim, how to ride a bike, speak another language, how to sew, I want to read with them all the time & I can’t wait to introduce them to my favourite novels!

Am I just being über selfish?

Is it selfish to want to spend time with your kids?

I’m tired of getting the dregs of Ed’s childhood. By the time he’s done at school he’s so shattered and even on Saturdays all he wants to do is chill out. Understandably.

Everyone who knows us well, knows I’ve always had problems with Ed’s behaviour. He’s stubborn &  feisty, like things his own way, but is very thorough in everything he does, sponges up information and keeps it in his little noggin. Home schooling him would either kill us or cure us. I would love our relationship to feel less negative. At the moment 90% of our life is me trying to keep him clean dressed and fed, I’d love more positive moments

I’d love to have more time with them. I’d love to have the pleasure of teaching them. I’d love them to have more time just being children, and all the running, hopping & yelling that involves.

Yes, it would be hard work, and yes, sometimes we’d have baaaaad days. But I trust myself that in the long run I would never fail my kids. I’d never let them be ‘behind’ or social misfits. I will always fight for what I think they need. I will always to my best.

I’m not sure how Ed feels about school. He’s happy when we get there; happy to see his friends & have a good run around in the playground but when the bell goes he often turns a bit sulky.

At home, Ed tells me it’s too noisy, that the teacher doesn’t notice him. I know it’s because he’s so well behaved there & all I can tell him is that she’d sure as hell notice if he was naughty. I tell him I’m sure she’s noticed that she’s not telling him off all the time, but it doesn’t seem to help.

From his accounts, he seems to spend a lot of time waiting his turn – a valuable lesson but surely not one he has to learn for half the day, every day.

Of course he tells me good things too, occasionally I get passionate accounts of what they’re working on & the games they’ve played that day. Once he flew the whole class to Spain and back!

I asked him what his favourite bit about school was & he replied;

“After lunch we play in the playground”.

That seems an awful shame, especially since he’s still on the EYFS curriculum, which from what I understand is mostly play. How will he react to KS1?

Anyone who’s ever met Ed knows he’s a very physical boy, who communicates with his whole body, so I would presume he learns best using his whole body. The role-play activities at school are definitely the ones that hit home the closest. I don’t get much out of him when it comes to what he’s been doing all day, but they’re the ones I hear about. If that’s how he learns best, what is sitting at a desk going to do to him?

And Bean, an entirely different boy, learns in an entirely different way. Bean is a flitter. As his mum I can tell you he will never cope with sitting and learning for a length of time. If he goes to school, I predict in a few years he will be prescribed ADHD drugs, when all he needs is a different method of learning. I can get him to concentrate, but it has to be done in really short intervals. As he gets older, I’m sure those intervals will get longer, but he needs the speed that a 45 minute lesson will never provide.

No-one could say they needed the same kind of learning system. If I could provide them both with their own programme of learning, as it were, they could learn at their own pace & in their own way, without having to tick anyone’s boxes (except mine). And I’ll keep them up to date with the national curriculum so that if they ever chose to go back to school, or if it just wasn’t working out, they can. They’re both very confident & outgoing, so I’m sure they would cope.

I’ve searched online for support groups, found a few families in our town who home educate & found learning resources. There are even museum days for HE groups where they can see those awesome chemistry experiments I was worried about them missing out on.

And since no-one wants to be with their Mum day in day out, so I’ve made provisions for them to have time at a regular sports/social club so they can socialise & have someone else be in charge.

I know its crazy idealistic, and I’m often far too romantic in the way I view my life but I figure, as with most things in my life, the old adage (old as in, 80’s pop) applies;

‘If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’

And my dream is to have kids who are happy, eager to learn and well behaved.

We haven’t fully decided our plan of action, we’ll use these two weeks off school to experiment with school work & make a decision as to the if’s and when’s.

But what if it turns out to be the best decision we ever made?

What if they love wearing red shoes every day?

What if they learn loads & have a great time doing so?

What if it makes them happy, well-adjusted young gentlemen?

Making Monsters at School

For some crazy reason, obviously something to do with my massive hero complex, I offered to help with ‘University Day’ at school.

Ed's first sewing project

As parents, we were invited to come in & share with the kids our expertise, talents and proffessions.

What a great opportunity to teach kids how to sew I thought to myself...only when I started getting the project together did I realise the reality of teaching 5 year olds to hand stitch...gaaaa.

I even did a small experiment with my 5 year old, I helped him appliqué a little circle onto a square. It went ok, but Ed being Ed, he soon wondered off.

 

So after much mooching through Pinterest looking for inspiration, a few sketches, I then made a few practise monsters. Got a bit carried away. Never mind

Eventually I came up with a simple design.

I raided my felt box for scraps, cut out monster shapes, gathered together some buttons, thread & stuffing. Armed with these I went to school today.

my basket of goodies

I was terrified but actually it went very well. I knew it would be a big ask, but never one to underestimate a child, I jumped in with both feet. If my kids have taught me one thing, it’s to never presume they can’t do something, because they’ll usually have a go and they’ve often been observing far longer than I think they have, and therefore understand far more than I think they do.

So I had three groups of kids aged between 5 & 8. An hour per group. Just an hour to sew on button eyes, growly teeth, stitch up the sides, stuff & close up. 

They chose their felt bodies, button eyes & teeth. They chose whereabouts they went on the body.

And yes, there was a lot of waiting around for the poor things. With only one of me & needles that constantly left their threads behind, cotton that got knotted & troublesome buttons, I had to do a fair amount, but the work they did do was fabulous & it was a pleasure to see the different ways they approached solving their problems. When we ran out of time, I had to finish some over break time & at the end of the day as they were going into their end of day assembly, I stayed behind to frantically finish off a few.

Despite how difficult some of them found it, it was awesome to see how passionate they were, & how keen they all were to take them home;

“Can we take these home?” yes.

“Can we take them home today?” yes.

“Really?” yup.

I hope they loved it, even if it was a bit dull at times as some of them had to wait a few minutes for me to re-thread needle after needle, sew a few buttons & snip a few threads.

These are a few of the monstery delights they made today.

Arrggh! Monsters!

Happily, I have ticked ‘run a makery class’ off my bucket list. I think this totally counts.

When Is It Not Funny Anymore?

I haven’t written in a while, I've been a bit too busy to feel inspired to, but after reading this blog post, too many thoughts began to whirl around in my head. 
http://www.workingmotherchronicles.com/2013/03/what-we-must-learn-from-steubenville.html

This is the newspaper article refered to; 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/us/teenagers-found-guilty-in-rape-in-steubenville-ohio.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

It started in the first year of high school. Most girls wore shorts under their skirts because the boys would all lift the girl’s skirts.
The whole ‘boys will be boys’ thing is ridiculous.

If, for example, a bloke lifted a woman’s skirt repeatedly in the workplace, he’d get charged for sexual harassment.

Or would he?

Would she just be seen as a moaning bitch with no sense of humour?

Quite recently, someone I care about was harassed at work.

Every day a particular person would comment on her dodgy parking.
It progressively got worse and worse.

He started to take photos of her parking every day.

Then he began waiting in the car park, just so he could watch her park, photograph it, then ridicule her all day for it.

She got to the point where her parking was even worse than usual (yes, it wasn’t that great to begin with, even she’ll admit that) simply because she felt so under attack.

Great prank uh?

I think this is the kind of thing you could do your bestest of friends, in a light-hearted manner, but not to a work acquaintance whom you don’t have that much fondness for.

Then it’s just malicious.

Of course, she explained to her superiors what was happening and they simply took his word over hers. She ended up on a stupid course to help her ‘improve her self-esteem’ (not required, trust me haha) and he suffered no consequences. She’s left feeling ostracised just because he crossed the line.

I’m not particularly beautiful but I've always had massive boobs.

I remember a particular incident in high school when the boys lined up to sit sideways from me. When I worked out why, I was shocked. It was all about checking out the profile of my boobs. For crying out loud.

I was sixteen.

Living in London, surrounded by men of various cultures, there were some who clearly viewed women as a play thing. There was no respect in their tone when they spoke to me, being an absolute stranger walking past, suggesting that I might be up for a good time.
 Don’t be fooled, I wasn’t wearing clothes which as a girl growing up “makes you look like you’re begging for it”. I was a rock chick, baggy jeans, wallet chain, black tee, huge hooded jacket and a frick load of black eyeliner. 
I could never understand what made these blokes think they could look me up and down like a piece of meat, what made them think they could presume I’d be interested, what made them think I the kind of girl to drop what I was doing, be it meeting friends or going to work, and go some place with them. 
Are there girls like that? 

And maybe there are a few girls like that, but mostly, we’re trying to catch a bus.

Why is it ok for a man to pinch a woman’s bum as she passes him in a crowded bar? I’m not going to buy the whole ‘if you go to places like that...’ thing. I think it’s only that we, as women, are often encouraged to ignore it or see it as a compliment that these things carry on happening.

But where is the line drawn?

“While we’re waiting for that to happen, perhaps the rest of us can make sure that we don’t dismiss all teasing as “not a big deal” because I think that if we learn anything from Steubenville, let it be the realization that this rape was the result of years of indifference.  Not only do we need to raise women who can rise above the words they’ll encounter, but we need to raise men who will recognize that a woman’s sexuality is not a joke.” 
Written by Erin in her blog entry; ‘What We Must Learn From Steubenville’ 18/3/13

I will never let my boys grow up to think they own a woman, or that a woman owes them anything. Thankfully, their father was brought up by his grandfather and retains some of his old-fashioned values. He is happy to help around the house and he sees my job and a house wife & mother as a 24 hour job, and therefore when he finishes work, is happy to pitch in, however exhausted he may be. He will make a fantastic role model for them both, and I hope they will become men who respect women as equals.  
But not only that, I hope that they will become men who treat everyone with respect. 
Men who know how far to take a joke, when to stop. 
Men who can stand up for themselves and say no.
Men who can stand up for others and not be indifferent or blasé about someone else's feelings. 

I’m not saying they’ll be perfect, but I do like a tryer.

(Please note; I'm not going to be one of those women who lets you think my life/husband/kids are perfect, they are not. Whatever I have said about my husband here, though true, doesn't leave him fault-less haha).