This week, the Irish Parenting Bloggers are writing about back-to-school costs, a topic that’s causing frustration for some and fear for many more around the country this week. In our house, we are at the early stages of the school life-cycle; we have just one of our three in school,
My lovely nanny Silvia moved on to a new job in a new career as a writer last week, as mentioned here. The kids sobbed, I sobbed, Silvia cried too on her last day. But happily for us, we found a fantastic new nanny last week – she started on
Working mothers are being put on the “mommy track” according to an article in the Independent last week. We have so many terms to learn all the time it’s hard to keep up – for anyone who is not familiar with it, “mommy track” refers to the sidelining
Tips for finding a childminder she said. Post your questions here she said. And the Gods of Taking Down Smug People thought “ha!” And even though I wasn’t being horribly smug, take me down they did. Within one week of writing a blog post with tips for finding a childminder,
So, you need to find a complete stranger to come into your house and be solely responsible for your children while you’re not there. Scary stuff. Looking for a childminder (or nanny to use the more correct term) can be a very daunting challenge. When I was starting to think
Mommy-wars. Or since we’re in Ireland, let’s say Mammy-wars. I can’t stand the term, but it’s the widely-used name for the phenomenon of mothers judging mothers on every element of parenting, originally coined to refer to mothers working outside the home versus stay-at-home mothers. Newspapers love the SAHM/ mothers working outside the
Today is my birthday, and I arrived home from work to an eerily silent house. As I looked around in mild confusion, two excited girls, one bemused little boy and one smiling childminder jumped out from behind the counter and yelled “surprise!” There was a cake on the table – this is
Working from home: no to mascara and high heels, yes to school runs and meals with kids, and best of all reduced guilt…. Lots of people work in jobs that are not suitable for working from home, and plenty of other people are not allowed to by employers. But if you have children, and have ever
Breach of trust, on every level. Like thousands of people who watched Prime Time last night, I’ve spent the morning trying to focus on work but my mind keeps going back to the images of children being slammed down on mattresses, tiny toddlers being punished despite being far too young,
As a mother to three children under six, most of my adult conversations every day are with other parents, most of whom have kids in childcare. Over the last few days, a recurring topic is the news story about RTE’s Prime Time sending undercover researchers into two Dublin creches, and gathering video footage
I should have been in bed, it was heading towards midnight on Sunday, and I was due up at 4am to head to the airport for a work trip. As usual I was feeling 90% apprehensive – worrying about leaving the kids, anxious that the baby would wake during the night and not understand
No matter how much you enjoy your job, and certainly if you don’t, returning to work after maternity leave is often daunting. Even if you feel “ready to go back” it’s hard leaving the little person with creche or childminder. It’s difficult the first time, and it’s no less difficult
“And it’s just that I don’t want her to feel self-conscious about how she looks with or without her glasses, and I know that this isn’t creche and that as a school teacher you have a whole class to look after and you can’t see everything and it’s not your
We woke one morning last week to the news that new Personal Insolvency Guidelines would mean people would be asked to cut out Sky Sports packages, stick to one foreign holiday per year, take the kids out of private school and get rid of that expensive second car. It was
Last night I wrote my first blog post, about the challenges facing working mums, and the universe subsequently laughed at me, in a “you ain’t seen nothing yet” kind of way, then unleashed a properly challenging day on this working mum: My baby was up from 3am onwards, feeding like a newborn,