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Comment of the day

Because we have such spirited discussions on AM, we're starting a daily post that pulls out interesting/thoughtful/challenging comments. To kick it off, here are two postings on the How to handle after-school tantrums blog.

Several folks like the end-of-day wind-down ritual described by SHO:

When they were quite small, and grouchy when I got home from work - we sometimes had our story while we had hot-chocolate and a biscuit. That was quite a while now - that was even better because we could cuddle up on the sofa and have a few candles and get really girly and settled in.

And when the conversation touched on home schooling, mumoftwo had this to say:

There are plenty of positive pluses about homeschooling without constantly needing to 'prove' that schools are evil places, or that parents who send their children to school are somehow negligent of their feelings!

Keep those comments coming!

The "Late Girl" at school.

Does every school have a child who is always late? Every one I've ever known has.

At my junior school, it was Mark Robinson - the obligatory child whose parents are older than everyone else's, and who has a jumper a slightly different colour from the regulation. Sometimes, he wouldn't turn up until just before lunch - his mother, who was, now I look back, clearly out of her mind on tranquilisers - hovering in the doorway, glassy-eyed and a hundred miles away. At my husband's school, it was Pardeep Kohli Singh - who also had the additional misfortune to be dropped off, after the gates had been locked, with his six other siblings, as well. No sneaky, low-key entry late-entry for them.

Now, at my childrens' school there is - as if it were compulsory - an harrassed-looking eight-year-old who is always, reliably, regularly, infalliably, fifteen minutes later than all the other children. It can set my clock by her. As I loop back onto my road, after dropping off the kids - around 9.08am - she comes bombing round the corner; hair unbrushed, soaked to the bone if it's raining, trailing behind her mother like a broken shopping trolley.

Over the last three years, I've become intrigued to the point of obsession with Late Girl. It's the reliability of her lateness that occupies me. The school-gates close at 9am, meaning she's always 15 minutes late. I've checked to see if there's an odd train or a bus that would necessitate her schedule being this delayed - but there isn't. I wondered if it might be a child-minding issue - but her lateness doesn't seem to vary whether it's her mother, her wild-eyed father or her deeply unhappy-looking brother that's taking her.

I sometimes walk the rest of the way home dwelling on what an awful start to the day she has, five days a week. That awful, jarring feeling you have, walking towards a school, when everyone else is walking away. I've almost asked the school secretary what the story with the family is, before reminding myself not to be so nosey.

Still, the story has a happy post-script. This Thursday must have been Late Girl's birthday - because, looking joyful, she turned up at school on a brand-new scooter.

Still late, of course.

What six-year-olds really know about sex

Tuesday's T2 cuts through the chatter on the topic of sex education for young children by going straight to those who know the most about kids' opinions: six-year-olds themselves.

Which is not to say that they know the most about sex. There's something to do with mummy's tummy, an egg of some sort, and daddy's involved some way - standing nearby maybe. But there's definitely broccoli. Read the wonderful descriptions the children gave.

In our discussion that started on Alpha Mummy last week, opinions have ran the gamut:

There is nothing "normal" about forcing the facts of human reproduction on 6 year olds, said Sarahn.

The problem is that the State is doing the job of the parent, said James Cullup.

This is mostly an urban thing, take the children for a weeks holiday living on a working stock farm, soon all will be clear, said David Vinter.

6... sounds about right to me. Shocking I know but this is the age when kids begin to discuss these things with eachother, said AK.

Read the original thread and join the discussion!

Getting into a good primary school: what you need to know

It's never too early to start thinking about primary school. This is what all my friends told me when I got pregnant. It seemed ludicrous. I hadn't even met my baby and yet I was supposed to scout out a school that would nurture her particular talents?

It turned out though that they were right. School Gate has just posted a guide to making sure your child gets into a good school. It suggests you start thinking about it when your child is 3 or 4.

But in our neighbourhood, getting onto the list of a good private school starts soon after birth. (The state schools have catchment areas that seem to extend only a few feet from their front gate.)

Most of the parents at my daughter's school say they were like me: clueless. But like me they had a secret resource: the clued-up friend.

My friend Suzanne knew the system, insisted we plan ahead, organised visits to open days and got the scuttlebutt on what other parents thought of the school heads near us. As a result, I put my daughter's name on the first-come, first-served list at a school we love. (The alternative was the state school with the worst reputation in the neighbourhood.) Since that time, the school has gone from a respected also-ran to one of the most well-regarded in our area.

My advice: Even if you're committed now to a state education (as I was), it can pay off to have the option of going private. You never know what can change in the intervening years.

So get a jump now on sorting out schools. And if you can, enlist a friend who knows the system.

How having children can make you friends (like it or not)

Making new friends as an adult can be really difficult, and while we all love our children very much, it turns out they're also a friends count-increasing opportunity. Right from the word go there's the antenatal class, then the mother and toddler groups and nursery, the chances to expand your social circle are endless.

So in some families, first-day-of-school nerves can be running just as high for the parent. Where will you fit in in the Yummy/Slummy/Scummy Mummy rankings? Will you get a place on the board of governors or seat on the bench by the gate, as Caitlin mentions?

This Saturday's Body and Soul covered this very topic, outlining a worry you might not have even thought of yet - the unwanted friends. Apparently every mother makes an average of eight new pals at the school gates, but will they actually be eight women you like?

There's the one who lets herself into your house while you're upstairs, unawares, the one who seems to have an unnerving ability to notice if you've lost a few eyelashes, or the one who tries to give you subtle parenting tips.

Is this something you've already encountered? We'd like to hear your stories of school gate encounters.

Scared of "Big School".

Not Dora. She went off for her first day at junior school with a cheery, "It will be nerve-wracking, but exciting also." No - me. I've been used to being top-dog at the Infants school. We were the Big Parents - looking down on the nervous, scuttling, amateur parents in Reception and Year One with pity. We were cock of the walk at Infants. God, we knew where the adult-sized toilets were. We so knew where the adult-sized toilets were. We knew where to go to blag spare Lost Property cardigans, could greet the dinner-ladies by name, and get let in by the care-taker with just a nod of greeting. And we totally ruled the bench by the gate. No other, younger, more jejune parents dared sit on it.
Now Dora's gone up to junior school, however, I'm back to square one again. I feel like - well, a kid on its first day at school. I haven't got a clue where her class-room is. Other, big, more insouciant parents - parents of kids in years as dazzlingly high as Year 7 - sit on the benches. They know where to go to give in the dinner money. I'm so bewildered and intimidated I'm seriously considering bottling it, giving the envelope to Dora, and just telling her to sort it out, instead. I'm too old to slowly work my way through another hierarchy - gaining new friends, consolidating power-bases, avoiding rogue cliques and working out who it's permissable to bitch about - again. Maybe I'll just veto the whole palavar, and home-school her, instead.
Pending that, however - one other thing. The Junior school uniform. It's black mary-janes with knee-length grey socks. Am I so wrong to want to buy similar for myself? I'M ONLY 33 FOR GOD'S SAKE.

The stress of school uniforms

Not that I'm a procrastinator or anything, but I'm planning to be up til the wee hours tonight sewing labels on my daughter's school uniform for her first day tomorrow. We also acquired her school shoes about, oh, half an hour ago.

I went to a school that didn't have a uniform, so the whole process is new for me. But I'm like many veteran parents in that I got sticker shock trying to kit her out with socks, gym shorts, dresses, shirts, skirts, blazer, swimsuit, house shirt...even a winter coat and kagoul (I'm not even sure what a kagoul is but I got it).

Luckily some of the items I snagged at a parents' second-hand sale, but I'm coming to understand that the stress and expense of the uniform are a hallmark of back-to-school.

School Gate reports on the stats and opinions behind uniforms. One survey showed that 73 per cent of parents are stressed out by them. And I thought not having the "Dora t-shirt or sparkly butterfly dress" debate in the mornings was a good thing.

13 things you should know before your child starts school

It's back to school time, or for some of us, start school time. On Thursday my daughter and I will walk to her new school, inaugurating what will likely be almost two decades of formal schooling. To start you out right, School Gate has put together the 13 things you should know before your child starts reception.

Just whatever you do, don't become one these nightmare parents who teachers dread.

What should we be teaching our children, and when?

Two stories today about education raise the same interesting question: when should we teach our children different topics.

According to to government recommendations, we should be teaching and assessing preschoolers on reading, writing and punctuation. The Times's School Gate blog comes out against the under 5's agenda and quotes Carl Honore, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, who says the "joy of childhood" is being squeezed out.

Another way to spend money at school

An Alpha Mummy reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) writes in about a problem fast approaching parents of school-going children:

When choosing a school for my child I deliberately chose what I thought was a good down-to-earth fee-paying school. What I didn't factor in though was the other parents' obsession with end-of-term collections.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against buying teachers a small token of appreciation at the end of term. Many of my friends whom are teachers are very happy with the presents they receive from their class - particularly the small home-made or quirky gifts which the child has had a hand in making or choosing. 

But our collections are for "a recommended £25 per family" to be paid to the class rep and duly ticked off on a register of names twice a year. Now I can understand that some teachers might baulk at the idea of 20 or 30 bottles of Piat d'Or or gift-sized Galaxy chocolate bars, but do they really expect hundreds of pounds worth of Habitat vouchers each year from children?

A straw poll of friends with children at fee-paying schools shows this isn't the norm. So have I fallen in with a nouveau riche set? or am I just being tight? And what do you think I should do? Shut up and pay up? Make a stand and donate less than the recommended amount? or quietly drop out and buy, or better still make, something more personal from my child?

The coolest kindergarten in Berlin

Pippi Longstocking inspired the design of this kindergarten in Berlin. Architecture students spent several days with children observing how they spend their time and how they communicate and then came up with this exuberant building.

As Coolhunter.co.uk reported: The Taka-Tuka-Land kindergarten was originally erected as a temporary solution, but with the fantastic Baupiloten approach to the refurbishment, it has become a permanent place for children. See more pictures and read about it here.

It sure beats those adapted Victorian buildings or '70s monstrosities that house so many nurseries.

Damn the teachers' strike

My daughter has only just gone back to school after the Easter holidays (Monday) and she's already off again today because of the teacher's strike, along with a million other kids in 91 local authorities as the National Union of Teachers calls a strike about its below-inflation pay settlement. How rude of everyone concerned to call the strike on a Thursday - they could have done it on a Friday so everyone could have had a long weekend? Or done it in a couple of weeks time when we've all had time to recover a bit longer from the holidays?

As it is, after two weeks of arranging play dates and trying to make sure she had something jolly to do while I was at work and she was on holiday - a feat of logistical planning any manager would be proud of, I was back on the case on Tuesday trying to find someone for her to play with this afternoon.

Tomorrow's school strikes.

Obviously this is a gigantic pain in the arse - although it did lead to the amusing side-effect of me, on Monday, asking Eavie's teacher, who is a red-hot baby-sitter on the side, if I could now pay her to have the kids on Thursday for the day.
But you do have to wonder - how clever ARE these teachers; these custodians of our children's minds? Anyone with half a brain would have scheduled the strike on Friday, leading to a nice long weekend for everyone. Tsk. Maybe we should have a word.

Read Eleanor Mills's blog post on the strike

How do you teach your children about religion?

What kind of religious education do you give your children? Religious school? Church every Sunday? Synagogue every Saturday? Or is religion not important at all to you? I grew up going to Sunday school, er, religiously. But weekends are such precious downtime for the family we never make it to church.

The question is how do I go about educating my daughter about Christian values?

To talk about the issue of religious education for children, Alpha Mummy invited Ruth Gledhill, the Times religion correspondent and blogger on the Times' Articles of Faith for a "Two-Fer", a video chat on the subject. Watch our discussion below and post your thoughts on teaching kids about God, Allah, G-d, humanist ideas or the belief that there's nothing out there beyond our experiences.

What tricks did you use to get into a school?

I'm told that we should put our daughter's name down for the good state school now, even though it could be years before she gets a place, IF she gets a place. Instead we've committed to a local private school with excellent results, nicely turned-out pupils and a price tag attached.

In today's Times one mother says there are tricks to getting into a good state school that most parents don't know about. (Funny enough, bribery isn't listed.)

What did you or will you do about primary school? And do you think any of these school strategies work?

Jenny Colgan fails to plan for school in France

This’ll teach me to be smug. For the last two years, whenever anyone has politely enquired where on earth we’ll be educating the children, given that we live in a part of London famous for Sweeney Todd, newspapers and having absolutely no children whatsoever, I’d try (and fail) not to  look TOO smug and say, oh, well, we’re moving to France with my husband’s job… whereupon people’s eyes would glaze over and they would see in their mind’s eye, just as we did, a fantasy that combined Etre et Avoir, Jean de Florette and those annoying petit filou ads.

Oh yes, I’d heard those wondrous tales of tots being sat down at 11am to tackle three course meals with knives and forks (and wine. No, not before noon!), and a residual teaching culture of naughty boy ear- pinching, something which, as the mother of two naughty boys, I’m not entirely averse to.

What's cooking at schools

The news that teens will be given compulsory cooking lessons at school is brilliant, although I hope the lessons are better than the ones I had. Back when I was a teen they were called "home economics" and we made things like "dessert pizza" (cookie dough rolled out, spread with cream cheese and topped with tinned fruits), which have been the cornerstone of my cooking abilites.

A few years ago I took a brilliant one-day course at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in which I finally learned something useful - how to make soup out of just about anything you have in the fridge, how to cut an onion, how to cook a big piece of meat.  I do think they need to rebrand the cooking initiative though. "Cooking technology" sounds a bit try-hard to me. Something like "bachelor cooking" or "university cooking" is better, especially at those all-boy schools who offer nothing like it currently. On my list for what to cook: spaghetti with tomato sauce, some kind of curry, chicken soup.

Pic: Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and John Denham visit a Young Apprenticeship lesson in cookery

Reading? No wonder they are confused

My little girl has just started school - in fact she's just completed her very first half of a term in big school - and, of course, she is learning to read. Every Tuesday, the Pact folder comes back with a couple of books in it and a notebook with the words she is meant to be learning that week. It is baffling. There is no logic. This week her words are: because, they, you, wanted and blue - try explaining why they don't obey any rules at all to an intelligent four year old. She can manage cat, mat, bat, sat etc beautifully, is great at sounding out her letters but there seems no system at all in how she is being expected to learn in school - her teachers go on about how she should use 'picture clues' in the books. Can't see how that helps in the long run. So I was delighted to read about Ruth Miskin's phonics approach which, she claims in an interview in today's Sunday Times, is totally fool proof - any child, she says, can learn to read successfully if they do exactly what she suggests. Next week a series of programmes on Channel 4 prove her point. So why is her pure phonics method, which works, not being taught to the one in five kids who leave our state primary schools not being able to read? Even the head of Ofsted admitted last week that there is a major problem and 1.6 million kids are in schools which are unsatisfactory. Are we all crazy? Any answers?

First day of school for mum Kirsty from Bath

Kirsty writes in about her daughter snapping those apron strings.

What a week! My first child Lily started junior school and I was informed by her that I no longer had to walk her to her classroom but leave her at the school gate so she could walk up on her own. "It's important to be independent Mummy," she told me. My youngest child Ruby started Reception and instead of walking her into the cloakroom as all the other mothers did I was informed that I could wait outside as she could do it on her own. "I am a big girl like Lily now". So all the years of promoting their self confidence and independence have come back to bite me! A little backward glance or a sniffle was all I wanted from them!

Thanks for writing in, Kirsty. Anyone else out there got a story about the first day? SEND YOUR PICTURES!

Picture: a German schoolboy going to school with a cone of goodies. According to this lovely blog Woof Nanny and Wikipedia, in Germany on the first day of school kids get cones filled with sweets, pencils and other school supplies

What's home-schooling like for kids?

Home-schooling: it's not just for religious zealots and hillbillies any more, apparently. In the US more than a million children are home-schooled. About 50,000 are home-schooled in the UK, based on unsubstantiated Wikipedia statistics, from a dodgy-looking home-schooling website.

Nine-year-old Marina wrote a really interesting diary piece in the Sunday Times about being home-schooled. Frankly, it sounds like my idea day off - loads of reading, making flapjacks and going to the park.

Considering school fees in our area and the scary state school opposite our house (we just got a note from the decent state school saying, essentially, "good luck with that whole education thing"), I'm thinking I should expand our personal library, bone up on my algebra and stay home and teach. Any other takers?

Are registration fees highway robbery?

Abi, a "frustrated working mum", writes:

"The amount of money I have spent on registering my 3-year-old son into private schools over the last 6 months is astronomical. What I couldn't figure out is what these registration fees are for, other than the headmaster's holiday to Naples or the staff's Christmas party. One school in Harrow, which shall go nameless, took a £75 registration fee. They only have 40 places, yet they allow over 250 children to come for an assessment. Does that make any sense? Or is that sheer fraud?"

AM knows what she's talking about.

Snow cancels school - unexpected result.

For the first twenty minutes, I was absolutely apoplectic with fury. Do teachers have a uniquely weak constitution - one that means that they, above all other workers, fear falling head-first into a snow-drift at a bus-stop? Why is it that the schools always shut? Are assembley halls 98% water? The dry cleaners open in all kinds of vile weather, and they're hardly a cornerstone of civilisation.
   But then - after the fury, and the three phone-calls cancelling work - I started to appreciate the snow. The snow, I realised, was on my side. The snow was the perfect excuse for bunking off work - a far more acceptable explanation than, "My child is deathly ill," or, "UK Living are showing the episode of Quantum Leap where Sam leaps into a gorilla, and I don't want to miss it a second time."
    God, the joy of not doing that hurried, hassled walk at 8.40am. We lounged around like lions in our thermals, watching Anne of Green Gables. The kids' friend, Maddie, came over, and they spent an hour in the garden making triangular snow items, and throwing snowballs at my face. Then there was a second round of lion-like behaviour, run in conjunction with lighting a fire and drinking hot chocolate.
   To be honest, if it snows again today, but the teachers have decided they will ignore the snow-lores of their people, and turn up for work after all, I'm very inclined to crack out the Basildon Bond and compose a classic "Dora had earache" sicknote. Playing in clean morning snow has to be a basic human right for a child. It's always melted by 3pm. It's wrong to make them sit, sadly, in school, watching it being violated by postmen and dogs.

Picture: On snowy days, Britain's teachers have ancient rituals they must attend to.

Complete and utter insanity

The other day, as I was delivering my three-year-old to nursery, I saw a notice on the board. It said: "Could anyone interviewing for T****** please let us know". Now I'm pretty jittery at the moment about schools, as I, like many mothers of pre-school children at this time of year, am in the throes of trying to find a decent reception place for my daughter. Could this be yet another hoop I'd neglected to jump through?

Turns out T****** is a private prep school (hence the asterixes) and the interviews are not for the parents but for the CHILDREN. Yup, that's right, they're interviewing three-year-olds. Apparently they have something like 200 applications for forty places and so the way they decide who gets in is by putting the little people through their paces.

Apparently this is a common practice in private schools, and I suppose it's mildly gratifying to know that even being able to afford £3,500 a term does not buy you a completely smooth passage to Oxford; but still - how depressing is this? How can you possibly judge a three-year-old? More to the point, how can you FAIL a three-year-old? What are the criteria? How do you single out the potential bankers from the future alcoholics? How can you put that kind of pressure on a small child? Isn't life hard enough without being written off by some ambitious head-teacher at the age of three? And what about childhood... is it now over aged three?

Should we abolish homework?

American academic Alfie Kohn - due to publish "The Homework Myth" here in spring - thinks so. "No study has ever shown an academic benefit to homework before high school," he claims, presumably at the same time as throwing his children's satchels in the bin, and kicking his heels up gaily in the air. Personally, I agree. I agree feverently, and not a little tetchily. The school has the kids from 9am to 3.3pm, albeit with an hour-long gristle-break at midday. If an entire squad of trained professionals haven't taught my kids, however dim, to read by the time they send them home, what hope have I got of doing it in twenty minutes, when they're knackered, while I'm trying to do something creative with sausages? Dentists don't get us to "finish off" a scrape and polish ourselves, in the front room. You never find a swimming instructor who believes you should get your kids to break in their back-stroke in your bath.
   No. When small kids get home, that is a sacred time - reserved for running around naked, watching "The Sound of Music," blowing incessantly on a harmonica, and sitting in the cupboard with the cat, eating cream crackers. It's not for learning to spell "audacious."

Picture: Outside school hours, a child should determine the use of its leisure time.

Scary parents

The worst part about the glut of coverage about parenthood these days is the constant reporting about other parents so you always know just how much you're not measuring up. I don't think my daughter will ever amount to anything because I have no intention of camping out overnight to get her into a school like these parents. And my husband is more likely to pal around with Jade Goody than attend church twice a month to get a place in a religious school. Then there's always the wendy house with a fireplace, open plan kitchen and satellite TV, like these parents bought.

One dad says of the mini-mansion, "I probably spend more time working on that home than I do our real one." A great idea - free up some cash by selling the Victorian terrace, then move into a wendy house with wooden floors and real fireplaces in the Tudor style, erected conveniently on the school grounds.

Tip: This website WILL help you find a school

I've lost count of the number of keen novice mothers who have asked me for a bit of advice about schools - I started out on motherhood slightly ahead of many of my friends and already have my eldest daughter in the nursery of our local primary school (fingers crossed she'll get into reception, we find out in May...). so I'm seen as the oracle on things education. This gets really tedious as it's the same conversation over and over again. Why? Because said deluded mummies still haven't twigged that they are subject to a mighty delusion, let's call it (pace Richard Dawkins) The Choice Delusion

Novice mum: So, I've been looking at the Ofsted reports for the local schools, I rather like the sound of Lady Blah

Me: Mmmmm Lady Blah is great, best Ofsted score in the locale but because of that you have to live within 0.1 miles of the school to get in

NM: But I thought you had a choice, it does look lovely, they've got a great website and the mummies outside all look so nice (for that read middle class and white)

Me: Yes, but you live at least a mile away, you haven't got a chance

NM: What do you mean?

How to get the kids to school on time with a smile on their faces (and yours)

Research has shown that getting two children up, dressed and out of the house in a hurry is more stressful than landing a Boeing 747 in a snowstorm. Not real research, but... anyway, here are seven great tips from a feature about the school run by Helena Pozniak from The Times back in October. It's always slightly stressful to read the words 'Try not to get stressed' but it's a good list anyway:
Sleep Make sure that your child is getting enough sleep. A grumpy youngster is a nightmare to deal with first thing in the morning. If need be bring their bedtime forward half an hour.
Plan Negotiate a morning routine and stick to it.
Feed If your child doesn’t like eating first thing, make a sandwich to eat on the way to school.
Help Don’t expect too much of younger children first thing in the morning, but at the same time allow them some independence so they continue learning new skills, such as buttoning their shirts.
Ban Don’t allow the TV to be switched on.
Plan more Give yourself a 15-minute window. If you are running five minutes late, it won’t be so stressful.
Chill Try not to get too stressed. The children will pick up on it and probably play up.
On the subject of the school run, the wonderful photo sharing site Flickr is full of pictures of the school run around the world, which you can find after the link...

What would make you sue your child's school?

1) Son does medieval re-enactment, has geeky picture taken while wearing chain mail and holding an absurdly large sword.
2) Son submits the picture for his high-school yearbook.
3) Headmaster rejects the picture, because the boy is holding an absurdly large sword, and they have a zero-tolerance policy against weapons.
4) Mother complains, and American Civil Liberties Union sues the school for violation of free speech.
There's a local paper report here and the full text of the complaint here. Can you think of anything more important they might be worrying about?