This week brings an unwanted gift of hot air (literal hot air) from the continent. I’m confident that the days will be just about bearable, but have a lot of anxiety about the nights. The children’s bedroom gets hot and that means a lot of midnight wakeups to comfort confused, sweaty and mad as hell infants.
It’s hard to find my zen. I must have some form of PTSD from the toddler’s early months, which were horrendous sleep-wise, because I’ve become a jumpy person that tip-toes around her own house after bedtime. Every squeak of the floorboards and every crackle and pop from the baby monitor when one or both or them are supposed to be asleep make my heart race. Just writing about this is making me break into a sweat! My husband who is a known loud person is unaffected; typical.
We hung out with some other parents yesterday when we went to Folk by the Oak in Hatfield with three other families. I collected some more data points for my informal Attitudes and Viewpoints about Children’s Schooling Survey (the participants don’t tend to know they’re taking part). They were:
- We didn’t really think about the schools when we moved here, but luckily they turn out to be Ofsted Outstanding.
- Going to a Catholic school from age 5 never hurt me.
- We looked at all the stats before picking the school.
Perhaps I’ll formalise my findings over the year or so that we have before having to pick a school for the toddler. So far the laissez-faire attitudes are more common; most parents that we know and meet seem to be picking whichever school is closest to them as long as it’s not obviously horrible. We will likely dig into the data more, for reasons best explored with a professional, but as far as I know, picking your local school is a fine way to do it. That’s definitely what my parents did, and look at me now… Er.
[…] also added a new data point to my informal survey of how other parents around here think about school choice. The mum of a child starting school next […]