Tag: Parenting
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Life in the fun factory, where the juggle is real
Apart from having a full time job, I’m also an on-demand food distributor, wife, nurse, cleaner, taxi driver, jungle gym, wallet, YouTube operator, human body warmer, event planner, referee, book reader, nappy changer, dresser, story teller, singer, dancer, and jogger with a stroller.
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The 3 parenting life-lessons I learned from my rescue mutt
I was going to be a rock star school governing body (SGB) mom. Ten years in, I know how foolish I was at the start and I’ve learnt some lessons. And some of those lessons came from a rather surprising source.
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How I miss the wonder years of lying in bed with my children
It’s the nights that turned into weeks that turned into months that turned into years that you spent in my bed. Hours spent feeding you, changing your nappy, and then letting you sleep in the bend of my arm.
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The trouble with making rugby players our role models
Adults looking for role models in sport is a bit like adults waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. You need to move on from such things. When it comes to the kids though, sports stars are a vital link between them and a sport.
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A postcard from home is love in its purest form
When my children, aged 14 and 11, left with their mother to stay in Germany for a year, it was always going to be hard, for all of us. The children had just spent four months in my solitary care, and my house is now very quiet and empty, although littered with the evidence of…
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The sweet pain of trying to catch up with your teen
Parenting rattles you. We spend the first few years desperately trying to provide the most nurturing foundation for life. Then, seemingly overnight, we’re flung into the world of the tweens, and almost everything we were supposed to hold on to, we must let go of.
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The bittersweet joy of your child learning to swim without you
At 10 and a half, she is in the golden age of childhood. Old enough to bake cupcakes on her own, but not so old that you worry she might be smoking cigarettes in the garage if you haven’t seen her for longer than 20 minutes. It’s a beautiful age to watch.
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Why I took my love for rugby to a marriage counsellor
Forty years! As with any normal marriage, we have had our ups and downs. But mostly, it has been one big, magnificent high, the most recent example being watching my laaitie put in a few big hits for his school U9 side.
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A change is as good as a haircut
Younger sister had to consciously shift her understanding of who her brother was. She flushed, proud of him, as I watched her watching him. He was no longer the smelly older brother, but had transformed into a handsome young man.
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An easy peasy guide to beating the back-to-school blues
I remember having a we’re-free-of-nappies party when the kid was potty-trained. How delusional we were, thinking that no longer having to fork out thousands on nappies would mean we could travel the world!