From making Easter bonnets to non-uniform days, there is no doubt parents of school-aged children have a lot to juggle.
As schools return after the Easter break, many parents will be bracing themselves for another term full of dates for the calendar.
“I just can’t keep up with everything,” admitted Ruth Billingham from Cardiff.
She said life at home with her 10-year-old daughter Delyth often meant scrabbling around for a specific item of clothing, a pound coin or attempting to pull together a plate of party food when she had not been food shopping.
“We had a cake sale at the end of last term which in the end I didn’t even contribute towards because I didn’t even know about it,” she laughed.
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Ruth said while many of the activities were “really great for your kids”, they could put a “lot of extra pressure” on parents.
“I’m a single parent… then I balance a full-time job as well on top of that.”
Then there are the various methods of communication to keep across.
“There’s too many ways that the school can communicate with you,” said Ruth.
“We have a regular newsletter, then we have another sort of weekly newsletter, then we have another email update… then there’s an app they launched this year, which I can never get into, one that’s really stressful and then never remembers your password… then we also have Teams, then there’s ParentPay… so it’s just this myriad of communication.”
That’s all before the parent WhatsApp groups.
“To be honest, that’s a lifeline for me,” said Ruth of the WhatsApp groups.
“There are some parents who are maybe on the PTA or more involved and they seem to know what’s happening and they share it… it’s almost like we’ve become reliant on them to tell us what’s going on.”
So how does she keep track of it all?
“Quite badly,” she laughed.
“It’s kind of in my head and I will put things in my phone calendar and just keep track through the WhatsApp group where somebody will say, ‘oh, remember, it’s wear red day tomorrow’, or ‘remember they’ve got to take a packed lunch’.”
Blogger Claire Kirby identifies with the juggle all too well.
She lives in Southampton and is married with two boys aged 15 and 11.
“There was a point when I had nine different apps on my phone just for school stuff,” she laughed.
“And that’s without the emails and text messages and the WhatsApp groups as well.
“It almost feels like a full-time job keeping on top of it all sometimes.”
Through her blog Life, Love and Dirty Dishes, Claire shares stories from her family life with a focus on parenting, mindfulness and sharing advice on family organisation.
“I’ve always been organised,” she said.
“It’s something I’m naturally quite good at so I share tips and things on that as well.”
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