More thoughts from the kitchen table…

Parents
19 February 2021
The Private Parent is a series of anonymous blogs from parents. 
My family love listening to music and my husband and I are always flicking between 6 Music and Radio 2 depending on our moods.

Music

However when we need to crack on with school and work I find the DJ chat and interviews a bit distracting. Sometimes I find some Focus playlists on Spotify that play relaxing piano music or spa music. It can be a bit dull and repetitive but actually I love having something playing in the background that isn’t intrusive and I can sometimes gaze out of the window and make-believe for a few minutes. I will get back to a spa one day.

The experts have written plenty of articles about the positives of listening to classical music so I am trying this out in the hopes that we will all benefit. 

We can rock out to the Foo Fighters or have a kitchen disco at lunchtime

I have really enjoyed educating my girls on some great 80s and 90s music that they just wouldn’t hear otherwise. I’m sure I’m not alone here. I have been picking some playlists from when I was their age and remember being much more into music than they are now. I am always asking what they want to listen to though as I like a bit of variety.

Virtual Parents’ Evening for Secondary school

This was a first for me but I had heard good things from other parents. It was a bit confusing to start with but school sent out plenty of emails to ensure that we had booked slots with a maximum of five subject teachers. I was a bit cheeky and managed to book seven!

Finally, the allotted day arrived and I checked my daughter’s email inbox. There were lots of messages with RSVPs, some from teachers I hadn’t booked. It’s a learning curve for all of us.

The meetings were held in Teams and it was a bit faffy jumping around between emails to find the links to the teachers’ meetings, but I had written them all down, to refer to so I could find out who was up next. When we joined the meeting we were held in a waiting room for a few minutes and sometimes other parents names popped up. I think we were early for some and a bit later for others.

Luckily I had booked each session with a five or 10 minute space between appointments. The meetings ran for five minutes each and then cut out so my husband and I knew we had to get to the point to avoid being cut off mid-sentence. I do think that if the teachers have any concerns to raise, then parents should know about them before parents evening so there are no nasty surprises.

Our daughter got plenty of positive comments from her teachers and some of the usual ones about joining in a bit more. It was quite funny in some respects as she has only seen some of these teachers a handful of times and as we later discovered, not actually handed in some of the classwork.

There were plenty of positives including the Spanish teacher recommending listening to Spanish music to improve her Spanish vocabulary, which I think is a brilliant idea. (I know lots of the lyrics to La Bamba but don’t know what they are in English). On Google I found some Disney soundtracks we know and have been listening to these in Spanish. The English teacher said that she was on course to be moved up a set which is a real confidence boost so we are working on persuasive writing by looking at ads and articles in the newspapers — what a valuable life skill to work on.

Among Us

The kids love this game and play it Hide and Seek style with their friends on their phones but also while connected together on a Whatsapp call so they can all speak to each other. It’s really great to hear them collaborating to find out who the imposter is. It’s been months since she’s seen some of these friends in real life.

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