Have you ever wondered how teachers treat your children when you’re not there to witness it?
Well, if comedian-múinteoir Julie Jay is anything to go by, you can expect them to be well and truly mothered. Even if they’re teenagers.
“It’s the mammy in you. But I think I was always guilty of this before being a mammy,” she says on a special back-to-school episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast. “I baby the first years to such an extent they get away with absolute murder.”
In fact parenthood has made the mother of two even more of a “marshmallow”, in the classroom, and the inverse is also true. “I’m basically Copperface Jacks-dot-com. I come from a litany of teachers, guards. In my family the love language is pensions,” she says. And having been raised by a teacher, she suspects she’s a bit stricter with her own children than the ones she teaches.
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As parents across the country spot Halloween decorations in the shops, (and journalists grapple with an increasing number of Christmas press releases), it’s clear that the return to school for children big and small is just around the corner. And with that comes many of the usual worries, juggles and questions.
When it comes to what age a child should start school, PE teacher and lecturer John Murphy says it’s not so much how a child is at four or five that a parent needs to consider, but what they’ll be like when they’re starting secondary school. “The difference between a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old starting secondary school can be huge,” he says.
Mary O’Kane, an author and lecturer in psychology and early childhood education agrees. “I always say, ‘Hold them back’” when it comes to deciding between a starting age of four or five, she says.
For parents of secondary schoolchildren, the all too familiar worry of social media and phones looms. As digital non-natives, it can be difficult for parents to stay on top of what is happening on their children’s phones. So we ask the question, to snoop or not to snoop – should parents go through their teenagers phones? Our panel share their thoughts. “I’m really concerned about our kids and social media,”, O’Kane says.
In an age of misinformation, disinformation and influencers touting questionable information, Murphy says it’s a difficult balance between being supportive of accounts that encourage children to be active, something everyone is very keen to encourage, and ensuring they’re receiving accurate information around nutrition, exercise and so on.
With a 2020 DCU report suggesting that a quarter of primary schoolchildren cannot run properly, half cannot kick a ball properly and less than a fifth can throw a ball properly, Murphy says a number of things are contributing to this, from the primary level of PE being “highly variable”, to the variation in activity levels of parents, which are likely to influence their children’s activity.
“I think we’re in a rush sometimes in sport as well to be grown up, to be better at really young ages. If you’re not really good, really quick – and you get these little [social media] reels and highlights, well are you really that good? And people are nearly afraid to go and do stuff then.”
Plus we discuss whether adults – pushy parents and competitive coaches – need to “have a word with themselves” when it comes to children’s sports And we recall our own PE days – including the horror of knicker shorts.
And if our children are struggling with fundamental movement skills, is getting rid of homework and freeing up time the answer? With a panel of two teachers and a child development expert, surely we will get the right answer?
School avoidance, or school refusal, as some people refer to it, continues to be a huge source of stress for the children and parents affected by it. And as schools prepare to return, a familiar feeling of dread may be setting in for families.
O’Kane shares her own experience of this with her daughter and openly discusses the shame and judgment involved. “One in five of our kids at the moment miss more than 20 days,” she says, a statistic which shocks the panel.
“These kids can’t go in. It’s not that they won’t go in,” she continues, sharing some of the unhelpful things said to her and other parents, and why the experience left her feeling like a fraud.
Vapes and nicotine pouches, colloquially referred to as snus, are plaguing the lives of teenagers. We discusses the challenges of managing the issue when often parents aren’t aware of it.
Plus the panel share their top tips to get the new school year off to a great start for parents and children.
You can listen to this episode of Conversations with Parents on the player above or wherever you get your podcasts,
Presented by Jen Hogan. Produced by Andrew McNair. Executive Producer is Declan Conlon
