Mummy Worries #GuestPost

Our guest-poster today is  Venita Dada of Funkolution, and I’ll let her introduce herself….

“I’m a Dutch way-too-busy-but-but-can’t-sit-still mum to 2, wife of 1, director of Funkolution Ltd and founder of I am MUM & so much more, living in the UK. I love my children, husband and life, along with all the unexpected surprises (at least when the surprises are pleasant). I strongly believe that the uniqueness of any person or business is his/her or its strongest quality. I will admit to getting a bit crazy when I thinks control is beyond reach”.

You can visit Venita on her website, find her on Facebook and on Twitter

Today I spoke to one of my friends in Holland. She falls in the category of the first time mum, who wants to get everything right the first time. She has a collection of books about motherhood that would make the local library jealous. She went on about how tired she is, and wondered if that was normal, how she is debating to give up breastfeeding and just generally worrying if she did OK at being mum.

She has made a selection of organic foods to serve to her little girl and is adamant to stick to her “routine” every day with milli second precision, all in an attempt to be the best MUM ever to her little girl.

She wonders constantly what she needs in order to do the right thing for her child, without realising that the past six months have flown by and she mostly has been busy just worrying about the things any new mum would worry about.

Being a mum of two I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that motherhood is a journey of trial and error, and that no book can prepare you for how your life will be as the mum of your own child or children.

Not getting everything right the first time around is OK.

As long as you don’t make life-threatening mistakes it really is OK. Actually it is the only way to learn to be mum to your own children. Somebody once told me that the only way to be the best mum to your children is to be a happy and relaxed mother.

So I shared this wisdom with her, and although I believed every word I heard myself say to her, in reality I often find myself wondering if the choices I am making for my children are the right ones. To be quite honest, I am stressed on a regular basis and critical towards my own mothering skills. But then, who will judge if I am the best mum for my own?When I really think about it the only answer is: my children, when they are all grown up. And then maybe only at that time with children of their own. Then they will be the only people in this world who can actually judge my parenting skills and hopefully allow me to pass the grand exam of mumhood!

Mumhood is scary and all mums set high expectations for themselves. Often going through the daily motions of life, we forget how important it is to enjoy being mum. To forget about what we expect from the mum in ourselves, just for a bit, and look back on our own childhoods, and remember how we loved our mums cuddling us or playing with us, just having fun with us.

My baby girl turned two last week and I look at her with happiness for the gorgeous girl she is, but I must admit that those baby years flew by, and that makes me feel a bit sad at the same time.

I made the commitment to myself to enjoy more and worry less (at least as little as possible being the control freak I am), because 30 years from now I want to look at my children and know that – although they will have flown past and I did my share of  worrying – I enjoyed my children, shared lots of special moments and created loads of nice memories for us to look back on.

So to all mums, especially the new mums, I would like to say, worry less (I know this is easier said than done), have more fun and only let your children be the judge of you as mum.

Just take some time, every once in while, to really enjoy being mum.

 

 

School Admissions from a Panicky Parent’s Point of View

A mum of two young boys, Stacey currently lives in Dorset and divides her free time (!) between looking after house and home, trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) new recipes, blog writing at It Takes A Woman, writing on theatre at BrewDrinkingThinkings and spending lovely evenings with friends and family. I’m very grateful she’s agreed to do us this cracking guest post!

My eldest son is nearly 3 and a half and is going great guns at Preschool, but pretty soon we will have to start the school admission process for him to start in Reception year in September 2012. School admissions are extremely competitive in my area and, since we are in the middle of two or three years in which there were bumper births in the area, competition for school places is quite fierce.

We live in Poole, which hit the news a couple of years ago for using anti-terrorism legislation when surveiled a family who had been reported as making a fraudulent application for a school place. They were not, as it turned out, doing anything wrong as they did indeed live in the catchment for the school they applied to – unfortunately it was (and is) a very popular and successful school. So why were they reported in the first place? Was competition so fierce that a green-eyed parent falsely reported them?

I find the whole arrangement troubling – parents at our Preschool who have gone through admissions this year seem to be mostly unhappy with their allocations. We previously lived in the catchment area of a fairly unsuccessful and quite run down school so when we had to move, although we liked the area, we specifically moved to the area we live in now because the First school is so good. It seems, though, that a lot of the children at our Preschool have been allocated places at the school in our old area, leaving us with the real possibility that our children will end up there anyway. We would have leave to appeal, but that may or may not be successful.

So what do we do now? At the moment, all of the above are unspecified worries as we can’t actually apply for places until the end of the year, but I’m trying to stay a step ahead in noting what the current policies are and what the deadlines will be. Our school of choice has 90 places available but, as I said, 2007 – 2009 were bumper birth years with an average of 1600 babies born in Poole in each of those years. Several schools have had to increase their numbers to accommodate this rate but it still means that not every child will get a place at their catchment area school. The Borough, however sees its job as done as long as all children in the Borough get a place somewhere – even though this could be a fair few miles away from their home.

Given this state of affairs, I know that I can’t change any initial outcome and I know the proper channels to take should we not get the allocation that we want, but I wonder what lengths some parents might go to, to get their children into a ‘good’ school? Obviously Poole Borough Council must have believed that the parents they surveiled had gone to fraudulent lengths to get their children into a good school and only last year the previous Government announced a range of measures, including a ‘whistleblower hotline’ and door step checks to uncover suspected fraud.

I’d like to think we’ve done everything right to ensure our children get the education we want for them, but we shall know whether we have done enough by this time next year. Unfortunately, I think it’s more a case of ‘fingers crossed’ than anything else!

Wow! Our area isn’t as competitive as this for school places and if Twitter and the like are anything to do by, there are even worse areas. Is the system broken? Are you in a similar situation? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Nicki