It occured to me the other day whilst using my cat like reflexes to catch a falling glass in one hand whilst mopping up spilt juice with the other, that I do indeed have superpowers. I haven’t always had these. No, it appears that producing two offspring has unleashed my inner superhereo. I don’t need to tell you that being a parent is very much like being a superhero. I mean on a daily basis we look like Superman in his civilian clothes, we blend in with the crowd whilst looking like any other person.

 

However, on the inside is a whole different story;

• x-ray vision. I can see everything. Every toy that has been hidden under the bed, every pair of socks that hasn’t made it to the laundry basket. Every bit of dust and dirt lurking under the sofa. Ok, lets not talk about the Christmas platter of cured meats that youngest found so offensive that she decided to hide under the sofa and that I only found last week, mouldy and nearly walking. My superpowers obviously need fine tuning.

• I don’t feel pain. Labour anyone? Standing on lego barefoot! Also having a threenager that has a fondness for demonstrating her ninja moves (superhero in training) on you means that you have a pretty high tolerance for pain.
• Superlearning powers. I can follow and memorise the instruction booklet for any game, rapido. Also ask me anything about any member of the cbeebies team. I know everything about Mr Tumbles and don’t get me started on Mr Bloom. In Mastermind my specialist subject would be cbeebies presenters.
• Poison Generation. Apparently every healthy meal I try and serve my children is just this, poison.
• The power of persuasion. I can perform Jedi mind tricks on my two. I use my charm to persuade them to tidy-up and switch off the TV. Admittedly this is a superhero power that I need to work on as more often than not it doesn’t work.
• Understanding different languages, in this case threenager speak. I can decipher what threenager is speaking. This is no mean feat. Apparently foof means seatbelt, this did cause much confusion in the early days when everytime we stopped in the car threenager would shout “foof out”.
• Superhero strength. I can carry threenager and all of the shopping from the downstairs garage and up the stairs.
• Superhero invention skill. I can invent a game of changing complexity in the blink of eye, rapidly adapting it to the needs of the audience.
• Empathy. I absorb the moods of my children. I know their moods better then they do.
• Superhearing. I can hear threenager trying to sneak a packet of crips out of the cupboard from another floor. I can hear the sound of arguing from behind closed doors. I can hear feet tip-toeing when they should be in bed.
• Elasticity. Reaching up to the top shelf in the supermarket to retrieve the last packet of Chocolate Shreddies. Another example of my elasticity is holding one threenager having a tantrum whilst filling in a permission slip for oldest.
• Healing powers. The ability to stop a leg that is apparently going to “fall off right now” and the ability to kiss better a knee that has been knocked.
• Freeze time. This is a power that sometimes I seem to unleash without meaning to, especially when playing the same mind-numbing game with youngest for the twentieth time. I look at the clock thinking at least an hour must of passed to find that in fact no time has passed.
• Prerecognition. I can anticipate things happening before they do. I can see when threenager and oldest are about to fall out and I can tell when a melt down is about to happen in a shop.
• Force field bubble. When threenager is having a tantrum I can deploy a force field bubble round myself for self preservation.
• Spiderwebs. Not literally but like spiderman I can leap and weave through skyscrapers and whole towns of houses made from…Lego.
• Shapeshifting. I can go from Mum to cleaner to writer to wife to friend in the blink of an eye.
• Telekinesis. I can catch a cup full of juice mid-air. Hurl a potty at a toddler about to have an accident and take the last smartie from a child without them even realising.
• Telepathy. I can read the thoughts of my two and know when they are brewing trouble.
• Superspeed. I can clear up our living room rapidly, get youngest dressed in 30 seconds flat and complete the school run before you finish reading this post.
• Invisibility. Being a stay at home Mum often means that I can walk about undetected.
• Superhero calling. Oldest and youngest only have to tip their heads back and call my name and I come flying in.
• I’m like Superman. No I don’t have the power of flight but I do wear big pants. Enough said.

What superhero powers do you have?

Yesterday I read an article that said all pregnant woman would be paid £3,000 for having a home birth. Is that not bribery? There are many things that I would consider doing with the promise of £3,000 being dangled in front of me like the proverbial carrot.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong I am all for home births and I think that it should be an option that a woman can choose. The key word in that last sentence being choose. Handing over £3,000 to a woman who has a homebirth doesn’t speak of choice to me, it sounds like shoving her down the path of homebirth with a hefty £3,000 push.

 

 

Apparently the funds are part of an overhaul of the maternity services which is designed to urge women to have their babies at home instead of a hospital. Why are they so keen? Well, a major review has called for hospitals to improve safety in maternity units to reduce the needless mistakes that happen. The report makes for scary reading as it blames the ‘mafia’ of midwives who fail to get Drs involved even when a labour is going tragically wrong. Also figures from the Care Quality Commission illustrate that

 

half of all maternity units still fail to meet basic safety requirements. 41% were deemed as requiring improvement whilst 7% were labeled as inadequate.

 

This makes for extremely worrying reading so what is the government doing about it? What it does best. It’s not looking into how this can be fixed and it’s not looking into any long term soloutions. No, instead it is throwing money at the problem it, hoping that it will go away. It appears that how they are going to deal with the issues of unsafe maternity units is to have more home births. Makes perfect sense. Not.

 

If lots of expectant Mums “buy” into this scheme then what will happen to the maternity units? Some smaller maternity units may have to close and that means less choice for any future Mums. Rural hospitals may also see their maternity units closing. This is hardly making a better midwifery service. It just seems another poorly disguised attempt for the government to save money in the long term and in the short term shut-up the problem. But this isn’t a problem that can be shut-up, nor should it be shut-up, after all we are talking about lives here.

 

 

The NHS watchdog NICE claims that homebirths are less dangerous than hospital births for second time Mums. I would like to know how they have worked this out. Critics have said that there is too little evidence to make comparisons. All I know is that if I had opted for a home birth then I may not be here today. You can read more about my experiences here

 

From next year the government will be launching pilots for the homebirth scheme and I will be very interested to see how this plays out. All I know is that I don’t agree with what Baroness Cumberlege said, in that it is “a driver for change, a driver for choice”. It’s not a choice when you are being bribed with £3,000 which any expectant Mother would find hard to turn down. I agree that our midwifery services need help and that they need support as they deal with an increasing population and older Mothers but I don’t agree that the way to do this is by forcing the issue of homebirths. The government isn’t supporting our midwives, they are burying them.

 

What do you think of the government’s plans?

Whilst we press on with decorating our new home I have been thinking about what is it that makes a good house for a family. At the moment we have two young children so our needs will change when they get older but this is what we think makes the perfect family home for us, right now;

 

• Open plan living. Before we bought this house we had never had open plan kitchen/dining and living room but I have to say that we love it. It is very practical when you have two young children as it means that you can get on with cooking the dinner whilst still keeping an eye on the children.

 

 

• Lots of natural light. We don’t have lots of this and this is something I miss as our rental before was very light and bright.

 

 

• Access to the outdoor space from your living space. Again we don’t have this as we are in a townhouse and our living space is on the second floor. It would be nice to have open doors leading outside so the children could run in and out.

 

 

• Utility room. We have this on the groundfloor for our washing machine and tumble dryer and it is fantastic. It means we can put a wash on without worrying that we won’t be able to hear the tv over the noise of the washing machine.
• A boot room or cupboard. We have a cupboard with all of our shoes and it is perfect as it means that we can hide the many boots away and they aren’t littering the hallway.
• An adult only living space. Sometimes it might be nice to retreat to our own little of sanctuary away from the toys.

 

 

• Playroom. Or to have a playroom so we can shut the door on the toys would be lovely too.
• Bathrooms. We have one bathroom per bedroom which is perfect as there are no queues for toilets or showers in the morning.
• Location. For us we have the perfect location. Walking distance to the shops, beach and parks. You need to consider what would make the perfect location for you.

 

A garden that is big enough for the children to play in. We had to compromise here and we just have a small balcony and a small patio, but it’s better then nothing and there are plans afoot to change it into a lush paradise.

What do you think makes the perfect family home?

As someone who used to teach in a state comprehensive school I have always felt very strongly that there is no reason to send children to private school. I believe that education isn’t a privilege you should have to pay for. No, education is a human right that everyone is entitled to.

 

I don’t like the idea behind the very wealthy segregating their child from others by sending them to private school.

 

How can a child finish private school as a rounded person when they have only mixed with the upper echelons of society.

 

 

I was passionate about my belief in the state system believing that it offered children a broad and inclusive education. Then I had children of my own and those ideals I had felt so strongly about started to be questioned. I felt torn. I started to worry about the size of classes, about the books that needed replacing in the school and the inconsistent marking of my daughter’s work. I became more appreciative of what a private school could offer our daughters. This worry was compounded when it became clear from a school report that a teacher had no real idea of our oldest’s ability. I don’t blame the teacher. When you have a large class it can be hard to get to know every pupil and if you are well behaved and working well then you can get lost in the system.

 

 

As a teacher I was a strong advocate for our state schools but as a parent I could see the benefits of private schooling. This is only natural and after a while I came to an uneasy truce with myself. I wasn’t turning my back on my ideals I was simply wanting the best for my children. Sending your child to private school is often something that is seen as shameful in some middle-class circles with mutterings of “what a waste of money”. It is also a recurrent article in The Daily Mail with stories of parents that had to sell their home so that they could send their little darlings to private school. There was an article last week where a mother bemoaned wasting over £100,000 in school fees on her daughter. Why did the Mother begrudge spending this money on her daughter? Because now at 17 years old the daughter was dropping out of school to be a jelly shooter in Magaluf. Not the return she expected on her investment. Hardly value for money. But isn’t that the point, private school doesn’t guarantee your child becoming a Dr or some other respectable job. When children are involved there are no guarantees.

 

 

The average cost of sending your child to private school per year is £13,194. This is a huge amount of money and certainly something that we could not afford to do. For the cost of a family car you can expect smaller classes, better facilities and a bounty of resources but does this contribute to a better education? No doubt it plays an important part but surely one of the most important things to consider is the teacher. Paying for a private education doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get a better teacher. Oldest now has a teacher who inspires her to learn. Oldest adores her because she makes learning interesting and fun. The teacher obviously cares about every individual child in the classroom. Oldest is learning and enjoying school life and this isn’t a privilege that we have had to pay for.

 

 

Oldest attends a school that reflects the society she lives in. She mixes with children from all walks of life. On the other hand a private school would give her a massively distorted view of society. Education should be about equality and private schools just cement the idea that the wealthy can pay their way through life. Also as a teacher I realise that any bright child will do well as long as they have support at home and that is something that oldest has in abundance.

 

 

There are parents that sell their houses, work long hours and don’t take holidays so that their children can attend private school but is this money well spent? I have to say that in my opinion I don’t think it is but then we are very fortunate because Oldest attends a good primary school and she loves learning. I might feel very differently if that wasn’t the case. Who knows, maybe in the future I will feel forced to buy my children’s education.

When it comes to decorating our children’s bedroom we will be following the lead of our two little ones. I believe that their bedroom should reflect their personality but as they share a bedroom this could prove a bit tricky due to their very different interests. However, it is important that both of them feel that it is their room. I also think that a children’s room should be a room that is magical, a place that they are happy to go and play in whilst creating memories. It also needs to be a room that they want to go and sleep in. I have been collecting my ideas on pinterest which you can find here.

 

We decided to ask our two exactly what they are looking for in a bedroom. They took this very seriously, burying their heads together to come up with a list.

 

 

As you can see they came up with a comprehensive but not entirely unrealistic list.

• They would like their bedroom to be painted in the colours of the rainbow. Well I do think that a child’s bedroom should be colourful as it reflects a child’s life.
• Bunk Beds. I am in two minds about this. On one hand I think it is a really good idea as it is a space saver on the other hand I worry about accidents. If we don’t get a bunk bed then youngest will need a new bed as she starting to show signs of needing a new bed. We need to make sure that their beds are somewhere they want to go to sleep in. A warm, cosy space where they feel comfortable.
• Glow stars. Oldest is fascinated with the universe so this is how these made the list. You can get stars that stick on the ceiling and will give the bedroom that magical element.

 

• Race cars on the wall. This is from youngest who loves her cars. Again you can get some nice car stickers or perhaps one wall in car wallpaper.
• A tent. You can get some lovely inexpensive tents or tepees for the bedroom that create a sense of adventure.
• A reading corner. They both love reading and looking at their books so creating a corner dedicated to that activity is a great idea. It would help encourage them to read and develop the important skill of reading. It could be created easily with shelves on the wall and some bean bags. Also creates different zones in the bedroom.

 

 

• Fairy lights on the tent. I think fairy lights are a great idea as they aren’t as harsh as an overhead light and could be used like a night light when the children are in bed. They will bring comfort to the children not having the room pitch black at night.
• A big dressing up box. A sensible idea for all of the many dressing up clothes. This would mean that the girls would be able to access them easily and put them away themselves. Would act as useful storage.
• A big chalk board. This is a good idea and would allow the children to personalise their space on a daily basis by drawing pictures on the board, they could also use it to leave reminder notes for each other.

 

 

• A car mat/rug. This would be great idea.
• A big alarm clock. I am all for this. Hopefully it would help them know when it is acceptable to get up in the morning! It would help them with their routine and telling the time.
• Height chart. Having this on display would be a lovely record of them growing up. It would act as a lovely reminder for everyone.
• Finally the magic blanket. Now that is something I think I am going to struggle with. Unless anyone can tell me where I can find a magic blanket….

So that’s their list. Watch this space to see how the room develops

On Jersey we have had a lot of grey and rainy days recently. So much so that when we see a blue sky we practically whoop with excitement. Last Sunday was another grey day with patches of drizzle so we decided to do something different. We decided that we were going to visit the dinosaurs. Yep, we have dinosaurs on Jersey.

 

Tamba Park is Jersey’s newest attraction. Set in the parish of St Mary amongst beautiful countryside. We paid £3 each for entry which included entry to the whole park, including a ride on the boats. With two dinosaur mad girls we had to make a beeline for the dinotrail first.

 

 

Walking through a dinosaur mouth, much to the excitement of the girls, we found that we had gone back in time and were now walking amongst dinosaurs.

 

 

Being brave we tiptoed past the moving dinosaurs. Being careful not to attract their attention.

 

There were some very scary dinosaurs that were obviously hungry. Holding onto each other we scuttled past them.

Phew, we made it out alive, no one had become a dinosaurs’ snack. It started to rain so rather bravely we sought shelter in another dinosaur’s mouth.

Hiding in his jaw we watched the rain falling down and admired the lake.

Oldest was very brave and decided to count the dinosaur’s sharp teeth. When the rain stopped we decided to go and enjoy the park. Oldest had a go at driving the remote controlled boats.

Before she decided to launch herself down the zip line

We then carried on exploring the park before heading to the cafe where we sampled the cakes and drank hot chocolate and coffee. We watched the people on the boats, having fun steering their boats round the lake. We were going to go on the boats but youngest was fast morphing into a grumpasauras as she needed a nap so we reluctantly left the park behind.

We had a great time at Tamba Park, in fact oldest said it was “dino-mite”

When I walked away from teaching to become a stay at home mum I was at the top of my game. An outstanding teacher who had secured two promotions and I was about to be promoted again. I was in a job that I loved yet I chose to leave.

 

 

I worked in a secondary comprehensive school in Bradford. According to a recent survey, Bradford is a Local Authority where

 

two thirds of the teaching profession are likely to leave their school in the next year and over half are considering leaving the profession entirely.

 

That survey paints a picture of a very dissatisfied workforce yet the teachers I worked with were anything but. Yes they were exhausted and burnt out but they were also passionate, driven and extremely hard-working. The most loyal group of people you could ever find with the kind of camaraderie that I doubt I will ever find again.I worked hard, leaving the house at 6:30am before my daughter had even woken up.

 

 

By the time I had arrived at school the staff work room would already be busy with teachers checking resources, planning lessons and looking over their marking. It was hard work and it was relentless. I wanted to ensure that I delivered the best lesson for my pupils, that every pupil was engaged and learning. Yet this took its toll and became more and more of an administrative nightmare and less about the teaching. There were the constantly moving goal posts, changes to how you should mark, and shifting expectations of what constitutes good progress. After I had finished teaching for the day I would then either be marking, planning, filling in paperwork, ringing parents, running detentions or after-school booster classes.

 

 

At quarter to 5 I would dash out of the door to collect my daughter from her childminder and on arriving home cook her dinner and start the bedtime routine until her Dad arrived back home at 6:30. He would then take over and I would go back to marking and planning. I usually worked until 10:00pm most nights and most of Sunday. Sometimes it would be Saturday too. I probably saw my daughter for less than ten hours a week. My family life was suffering but I loved teaching and didn’t want to have to choose between my career and my family.

 

I was passionate about teaching. I wanted to enthuse and engage every child in my classroom which with the average class size being 30 pupils plus was no mean feat. But I did it. I prided myself on teaching everyone well.

 

But Gove signalled the end for me. His elitist views on what constituted as teaching and what our pupils should be learning baffled and angered me in equal measure.

 

 

The man was completely out of touch as to what goes on in a school and out of touch with the needs of pupils. My daughter at 6 years old spends her Friday nights doing grammar work which last Friday saw her working on possessive pronouns and prepositional phrases. Work that is so tedious I worry that it is going to turn her off school. You might think that learning the nuts and bolts of grammar at such a young age is a good thing but the problem is that the teacher is under so much pressure to get through everything in class that the parent also has to help by teaching their child when they get home. Trying to teach a six year old about apostrophes when they are already exhausted from a day at school is not easy and I’m a teacher! Teaching is no longer about inspiring your pupils instead it’s about ticking the boxes. Gove and his successor, Morgan, are creating an army of drones.

 

My children’s generation aren’t allowed to be creative instead they are drilled on how to regurgitate facts and pass exams like robots.

 

 

Politicians have made the new curriculum so elitist that it is zapping the joy from teaching and learning. There is no time for my six year old daughter to just read a book purely for enjoyment, now she needs to be explaining in complex sentences what can be inferred from the book.

 

I saw my pupils as individuals yet the new expectations meant that I wasn’t allowed to, instead I had to view them as a statistic. They became grouped; below target, on target, above target. With more paperwork to be filled in on how I was going to ensure each group reached their target. Ludicrous. Despite this I continued. I was dedicated to teaching and I hoped and wished that common sense would eventually prevail. Yet whilst off on maternity leave with my second daughter I had an epiphany. I was enjoying being at home with my children, having the time to sit and chat with my oldest about her day. I now had the time to listen to her. I had to admit to myself that I had been sacrificing the needs of my daughter for my pupils. Yet Gove would have scoffed saying that I needed to work harder.

 

Well he was right I did need to work harder but on my own family.

 

I was good at my job but I was failing my family. The birth of my second daughter made me realise that I couldn’t continue as a teacher. I was one of the many teachers leaving the profession but this wasn’t for the reasons the media would have you believe. I wasn’t lazy and I wasn’t a failure, I just realised that I couldn’t balance being a good teacher with being a good Mum. I have not regretted my decision for one minute but do I miss teaching? Absolutely. However I decided that it was about time I put my family first and with the damage this government has done to our education system I don’t think I will be returning to teaching anytime soon.

 

When we lived in England we had a garden that wrapped round three sides of our house. It was glorious. We could sit out on our decking and look down the hill and across to the moors. Then we upped sticks and moved to Jersey. Now instead of moors on our doorstep we have beaches and whilst I miss the moors I have to confess to loving the beaches. But I do really miss having a garden. In Yorkshire we were lucky enough to be able to afford a decent sized house with a nice garden. In Jersey properties are much more expensive and you have to make a compromise somewhere and more often than not it is the garden. Houses with gardens come at a premium in Jersey.

 

 

Our house does have a little outside space. A small patio to the front of the house and then on the top floor a balcony to the master bedroom. These rainy months have left me craving greenery so I have been thinking about what I can do to invite some greens into our very small patio. Here are my ideas;

 

• Containers. Create my own little mini gardens in lots of different containers. I could even try growing vegetables and salads.

• Bamboo. Planted in pots this could be used to create some greenery and make the patio feel more private.
• Herbs. I used to keep herbs on the windowsill in Yorkshire and I found it relatively simple. A herb garden would smell nice, be useful and make a nice welcome to guests coming to the front door.

• Edible flowers. They would look pretty and I could also add them to my salads!

• Hanging planters for the wall round the patio. Would make the ugly wall look nicer.

• Vertical planting. Use some trellis on the wall to grow plants up.

What do you think of my ideas so far? Do “yew” have any good ideas that might help?

If you are looking for any ideas for a patio garden then make sure you check out my pinterest board.