Where to start?

[Amber]

The siblings are all quite different and joyously happy and completely valued for who they are. I don't ever remember seeing any spellings or timetables on their fridge. When I chat with the parents they are often unaware of exam timetables, deadlines etc, but are at every parents' evening, play, concert, art show etc.

This is how it should be - a lesson to us all.

I was doing so well until it came to being at every play, concert and art show...is any of that negotiable to still be a good parent, wonder woman?

(In fairness my children tend not to invite me. It may have something to do with getting a terrible fit of the giggles during a piece by a flute choir of something called 'The Come again Waltz' or Rag or Something, which went on for a full 20 minutes and kept seeming to stop before mercilessly starting up again and repeating itself almost ad infinitum. OH and I managed to set off everyone on our row, and then the row in front, and then the row in front of that...when the applause finally came there was a loud burst of simultaneous snorting as we had all held onto it for so long. I am not a massive fan of flute choirs at the best of times but my poor kids are now traumatised into shudders every time they hear one).

[wonderwoman]

Lol - the things we do fulfilling our parenting roles.
Reminds me of the time I insisted OH and I attended a drama evening at school as we had failed to attend much else for DS2 that year. It was based (very loosely) on scenes from Shakespeare rewritten in modern language by y8 children - to say it was dreadful would be an understatement and by the end of the evening DS had not appeared on the stage. When I eventually found DS and asked why not - he told me his group refused to do their scene in front of parents because it was embarrassing and he would have told us if he knew we were going! Communication not a strong point then.