And like a dream, a life, a reason…

I’m going through a bit of a tricky parenting phase just now. Enough to make us seriously question Home Ed as an option moving forward although both Ady and I and the children want to Home Ed we don’t want it to be at the compromise of other relationships. As it goes it is not Home Education that is the issue, it is the whole 24/7 nature of facilitating it. I adore Davies and Scarlett, I imagine that goes without saying but we seem to be trapped in a vicious circle of bad behaviour and bad parenting right now which is not alleviated any by spending all day every day together.

So Ady and I have been discussing ways of me getting a bit more ‘time off’ which will hopefully result in some ‘good behaviour’. He’s had some stern words with the children and I am determined that we go back up again from here, adamant that I change my tactics a bit and hope that results are forthcoming soon. He is also planning to take Davies out to work with him once a week while his job is a bit more flexible. I think Davies is going into his next ‘phase’ right now and as I have felt before at times I fail him in not providing all his needs at home. The gulf between him and Tarly has widened again but rather than acting up to his standard he is bringing himself down to hers and acting like he’s a three year too. I recall from infant school that boys of six seem to feel the need to be silly, laugh at toilet humour and be very boisterous and I really struggle to accomodate that or provide an outlet for it in any other way. Scarlett is being very assertive – which I have often celebrated about her before and still do at the same time as struggling to deal with her when she is asserting herself against one of my requests to do something reasonable.

In an effort to get organised for Davies’ party and to do something creative together we made some posters of various Wallace and Gromit characters to decorate the walls of the venue with. We kept going until we ran out of paper. This morning Davies had been playing with his newly revived wooden traintrack which rarely sees the light of day and been counting straight and curved bits and working out how many he would need to constuct various things, so education happens even in a warzone I guess. 😉

When Ady got home I headed out for an hour to go walking. As part of my aim to lose some weight, get a bit fitter and also have some clear head space I’m planning to do that twice a week when Ady gets home from work until the nights draw in too much to make it feasible as I’m not confident that tramping around in the dark is the best idea but I reckon I have a good couple of months yet before that happens. So I enjoyed a massive circuit down the seafront, along the coast, through the local town centre and back past the park home again. My legs certainly knew I’d done it, as did my feet which are a bit blistered from me wearing boots without socks – must dig about in the wardrobe and see if I have any trainers still in there, I used to have at least two pairs.

So there you have it, tricky right now but hopefully getting better soon.