Author: Alison

Homework – that hot potato. Where do I start? It’s a big subject: complex and controversial. So I’ll start with the voice of some else. Someone whose comment I read on Facebook and who pretty much sums it up for me: “she’s 6…surely after a whole day at school her time would be better spent climbing a tree…or swimming at the beach…or lying on her back imagining that she’s a flying fucking snail?”

When my kids were aged 4, 5, 7 and 9, my ex and I took them out of school (the 4 year old was just due to start in reception) and took them on a trip around the world for 7 months. The teachers didn’t bat an eye lid. In fact, we had to badger them to give us guidance on what work to cover while we were away and even then, the only help they gave us was telling us to keep up their reading and maths. 7 months out of school and the teachers weren’t concerned. Far from it. They knew that the life experiences gained, far outweighed any concerns that they would fall behind. Guess what? They didn’t fall behind and I can assure you that we didn’t do a huge amount of formal home schooling. They didn’t fall behind, because what they were learning was more than just the sum of ticking those all important boxes and we weren’t given any boxes to tick. 

If children are to benefit from homework, it has to be relevant. It has to add something to what they are doing at school. It shouldn’t be finishing off work that there wasn’t time to complete in the classroom. What more does a primary school kid need to know or to do or to learn or to say about a subject or a topic, that can’t be covered in school the next day and the day after that. 

When children don’t HAVE to do something, they WANT to do it. Yes, kids are hard wired to be contrary. Throw away that reading record and they will want to read again. Give them time after school and they will want to fill it and they will fill it with things that will open their eyes and expand their minds: kicking a football, playing in the park, a play date, even sitting and watching some telly will bring them benefits. I think you could even argue that being bored will ultimately do them more good than doing a page of sums. 

My daughters’ primary school tried various homework strategies over the years. The final one I had to deal with was: the homework grid. Add an ‘n’ in there and make that ‘grind’. It was a complete nonsense. The student has to pick three activities from a grid to complete in a term. The stipulation is that one activity has to be creative, one has to involve research and writing and one can be a relevant outing. On the one hand it creates more freedom: the child has weeks to do it. In reality it is left until the final weekend, because, funnily enough, a 6 year old can’t manage her own time and then the onus is on the parent to get it done. It piles the pressure onto already stressed out parents and creates a situation where the child’s freedom is yet again compromised. Helicopter parents who have time to hover over their children, realise that, as well as being brilliant at every other subject, mummy and daddy are amazing artists too. Meanwhile, parents who let their children do their own homework have to put up with their kids’ efforts looking like a bag of shit in comparison. 

Frequently homework was returned without feedback or comment. When you have watched your child work hard at something, this is frustrating to say the least. It got to a point with this, where I drew my own conclusion that it is no longer considered pc to give feedback – the most important thing is that the evidence is there, for the teacher to show the inspector to tick the box. No! The most important thing is to see evidence that the teacher cares for that child as an individual. I am not blaming the teachers, I am blaming the system. 

Kids are naturally creative and resourceful creatures, who, given the freedom and space will happily achieve and accomplish some amazing things. Primary school age children should be given the time to just ‘be’, before the enforced education of secondary school. They should be given the time just to imagine that they are that ‘flying fucking snail’, or whatever else they want to be. 

My 90 year old Scottish Nanna and I used to watch Billy Connolly together. She absolutely loved his humour, but hated his liberal use of the F-word. An article in the Times this week stated that swear words no longer pack the punch they used to and that the F-word is no longer the Class A swear word it used to be.

It’s interesting the way different families approach swearing and the house rules they have surrounding it. When I was growing up, my parents didn’t swear and consequently I would never have dared swear in front of them. Even when I swore with my friends as a teenager, I would feel a little guilty at the thought of what my parents would say if they were to hear me. When I had left home, however, the odd mild swear word started creeping into my Mum’s vocabulary and it sounded quite shocking to me. This did coincide with my Dad divorcing her, so that probably had a lot to do with the need to use the odd, ‘bloody’ here and there, usually followed by ‘man’ in her case.

Listening to radio 4 a while back (much to daughters’ disgust), woman’s hour was discussing the use of swear words in the home and they had a mum from both camps in the studio: one who swears liberally in front of her kids and one who doesn’t. It made me reflect on my views. When the girls were younger, I never swore in front of them, I would just get Tourettes when they had gone to bed. It was as if I had been saving up all the frustrations of the day and the best way to express them was though swearing. You’ve got to admit, there’s nothing like a few choice swear words to really get things off your chest. “Fuck off!’ just packs a far bigger punch than, ‘go away!’.

Now the girls are older, I don’t allow them to swear in the house, but I do find myself using the odd mild expletive in front of them. When they are at school, my language is far more flowery, but I am sometimes caught out when I forget that one of them is off school sick and I have to shout a sheepish, ‘sorry’ up the stairs.

When I was at my Mum’s last week, she told me off for the use of the F-word in my blogs. I reminded her of how her mum used to tell Billy Connolly off by wagging her finger at the telly. When my daughters read my blogs out loud, as they sometimes do, they won’t say the swear words and they say, ‘muuum’ and give me a disapproving look. Yeah, I think to myself, as if YOU don’t swear!

The other thing about swearing, is that I think it sounds worse coming from the mouth of someone else, than it sounds coming from your own. When I hear friend’s swear in front of their kids it can sometimes make me cringe and that’s when I really start to examine where my principles lie. I do know that I need the word, ‘fuck’ in my life. I could not live if, ‘bloody hell’ was banned from our vocabulary. ‘Shit’ is a no-brainer, as is ‘bollocks’ and surely no-one can get through the day without a few, ‘oh buggers’ here and there. One word I NEVER say is the C-word. So you see, I do have some principles, Mum 🙂

I would love to get your thoughts on this subject. Please let me know what side of the fence you are sitting on. Hopefully not on it, as that would really fucking hurt!

I’ll leave you with a swear word that partner and I have made up and though I say it myself, it is pure genius. It can be played around with like a word game and used in a multitude of situations. Just not in front of our kids:

Buggeryfucknuts
Nuttybugfucks
Fuckingbugnuts
Fuckerybugnuts
Nutteryfuckbugs
Fuckingbuggerynuts….

Keep playing for excellent stress relief 🙂

     Dame Sue ‘Rock God’ Ion

Do you ever come across something, that has good intentions, but winds you up almost as much as a Kim Kardashian selfie…well, ok maybe not that much. For me, it’s the primary school lunchbox police. Uuurrggghh!! Even thinking about them makes me mad. An extremely well meaning PTA mum generates an e mail stating that, for a whole month, lunch boxes are being examined (judged) and unsuitable items will be removed. There is an attachment listing healthy lunchbox items. It’s a Sunday night and I either have none of these in my cupboard or the kids would rather eat their own toenails, so I have already failed. The second problem is that the well meaning parent, let’s call her Christine, has stipulated no chocolate. I examine our biscuit box – every single one contains chocolate in one form or another: a drizzle, drops, the whole bloody thing drenched in it. I opt for the bar with a drizzle of 80% dark, organic chocolate with a ponsey pattern on it, left over from Christmas. My thinking being, that Christine will appreciate the ‘organic’ element and she’ll go easy on us. This, along with a ham sandwich (cheap, processed, but I bet it slides through Christine’s net) a packet of breadsticks (obviously no crisps allowed) and an apple – the apple is lobbed in as a Christine pleaser and will return home, slightly more bruised and floury, but otherwise untouched. 

At school this afternoon, daughter 4 is walking in front of me. What’s that on your bum? I ask her, putting my head rather embarrassingly close and sniffing, in that way that Mums do. There is a large, dark brown solid patch, spread across the rear. That’ll be the chocolate from my biscuit, she says, I had to sit on it when the inspection took place, so that no one saw it. I’m incandescent with rage. 

I spot Christine across the playground. Standing next to her is her daughter, slurping on an Innocent smoothie. I feel an incredible urge to go marching over, look her straight in the eye and say: Christine. That innocent smoothie you have so smugly given your child is not so innocent after all. That little carton is absolutely rammed with sugar, equivalent to 3.5 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Donuts and while your daughter is going to be jumping around like a Duracell bunny any moment now, in 20 minutes she’ll feel like a bag of shit and be giving you merry hell! 

Instead, I pity Christine. After all, she has good intentions. However, as I glance at her ample breasts and wide buttocks, I can’t help wondering where all the confiscated food goes.