As I lie here in bed with my laptop on my knees, my 17 year old daughter to my right snoozing, she is feeling unwell, it’s nearly 10am and yes I am still in bed. I feel inclined to pretend I am up, awake, having done a run and meditation, had breakfast, got dressed but none of that would be true. I am here in my jammies and the thought of walking down the corridor to the bathroom and doing my teeth right now seems a bit of an epic.
How do kids learn things that connect with their souls and set their imagination on fire?How do the fireflies of inspiration spark their spirits? Can I help keep those iridescent lights of creativity shining?I ask myself these questions...they are big questions.I know that for me putting the kids in a schooling environment stopped being an option when I saw them shrinking and the sparkle diminishing from their eyes.I also know that this may not be easy to read, especially if in your heart you feel through my words that there is
My husband tells me that according to a book that he has just read that monkeys raise their young not always knowing who is who, they look after each child like it was their child. That years ago before the age of agriculture patriarchy and that the need for one’s own child was irrelevant, that men looked after other children as if they were their own.That children were raised in troupes or flocks and that every child was everyone’s child. I am not entirely sure how I would feel about
From where I am sitting right now, everything is perfect, I am surrounded by families having lunch, chatting, smiling and laughing. I am the odd one on her computer amidst a restaurant full of people eating, in fact the waiters may ask me to leave in a minute... If I take a quantum leap into the unknown and believe what I have been reading (Thank you Jonathan Safran Foer for talking about belief in We are the Weather) it is clear to me that it isn’t looking pretty.I think I
It was one lunch time sitting around the table that my husband started talking about values and that we don’t always do what we say we do, even though we really try to. He went on to talk about the parmesan, that my daughter was generously grating over her garlicky tomato spaghetti. He said ‘for example, take parmesan, we are vegetarian but is it vegetarian?’One of my daughters got up and looked at the plastic packet that it came in.‘Mum, what is rennet?’ she asked. I knew it was not
This morning my husband shows me the Instagram account of a self made Italian millionairess who has made her fortune via Instagram. She just takes pictures of herself, in various outfits, looking sometimes like a model and sometimes quite normal. She has done this for years and now gets paid by fashion houses to promote their fashions. I assume that is how she has made her millions. My knee jerk judgmental response was that she is narcissistic. But that would be missing the point. She is clever. She has made
There are some mornings where I wake up with another large family of five in our kitchen. Behind the bright sparky face of our son’s Minecraft buddy, I see this family waking up. They are in South Africa and we are in Italy. Slippers, pyjamas and all. I see breakfast being had and I can hear the teaspoons stirring in cups and I wonder if they drink tea or coffee…This feels a bit like community, even though it is bizarrely though a screen. I listen to the way my son
‘Just let me live my life’ were the words that came out of my sons mouth yesterday as I tried to teach him about following a recipe. He was furious. He was wanting to cook, I was wanting to help him cook. He was wanting to make biscuits, I was wanting him to follow a recipe. He didn’t want to. I wanted him to. We hit a stalemate. ‘Just let me live my life and let me learn how I want to learn’ I caught myself in that moment, caught
 This is a story about when our children were younger and learning out of the box. 'Step away from the desks, grab your ideas children and fly beyond what you ever imagined could be possible.' By the fluke of the universe, the way magic works and sheer luck, if is there such a thing... we have landed a wonderful ‘Workaway’ person who is a script writer and a film maker. This week the kids decided to work on projects. One of our daughters ran with one of the ideas and has decided to
We didn't have curriculums, piles of books, exams etc because traditional schooling did not work in our household.(But when they were older two of our girls did want to take exams, see below!)Â We chose another route and the route we chose was completely different to bringing school in to our kitchen. There were no piles of exercise books that they had to get through by a certain date. I did not pace up and down behind them checking the clock and waiting for them to finish things by a certain