Not to mention that sometimes logging into a platform or accessing the messages, emails etc. wasn’t possible.

Every school has been trying to manage this situation in the best (?) possible way, trying to keep up the pace they had when meeting students in their real classrooms. But that’s not possible.

Everyone who has been working online for some time knows that communication channels need to be clearly defined and accessible to all, at all times, that for live classes we have to give (and receive!) clear instructions, safe links, and enough time to connect. Not everyone has super fast internet connections.

Dear everyone – colleague, teachers, educators, friends…. – please adjust the pace of learning, teaching and working!

We had a break (Easter), but after every kind of break we need time to readjust to this all. What seemed to be a sprint at the beginning, is a marathon: therefore we have to lower the pace and focus more on how we can make sure we all get to the finish line!

Last week I have spent more than 23 hours in online meetings, sessions with clients etc. not counting the time to prepare the meetings and sessions and all the admin that comes with running your own business.

I know it is possible to schedule them in a way that there is no overlapping. For my scheduling I use Acuity (but there are many other tools of course!) where I make sure I have buffer zones of 20 minutes that allow me to stretch, get some fresh air, drink or eat something in between meetings. Some of my colleagues spend 4 hours or more in a row, sitting in front of their screens, up to 16 hours a day. That’s simply not healthy! Although I think that I managed to keep up a good pace and manage to organize it all in the best possible way, I feel like my (brain) muscles are sore from this all. In addition to this all, the “emotional” aspect of this all ask our “emotional” muscles (I can’t find a better way to express that “feeling”; please share a better definition of this in the comments) are constantly stretched, highly alert… exhausted.

After several weeks of online work and learning, we should all assess what works, what doesn’t, and speak up! Let colleagues, organizers, managers, teachers, friends etc. know so that we all can “breathe” and go through this in the healthiest way.

For me it is clear that last week was an exception. This week I have scheduled less meetings, I spend more time outdoors and include workouts in my daily schedule. – And I think that my children need the same kind of time offline too. They won’t be learning less, and, honestly: we can’t compare the end of this year’s school year with any other one before. It is different, schools need to find ways to assess the progress and take the circumstance into consideration. Why are some worrying that “this generation will once be labelled with “those who graduated in the COVID19 year””: that’s our reality, that is how it was in other times too (war times come to mind – there are still people who minimize the effect of this pandemic or avoid thinking of it). – So, let’s adjust the pace!

Everything we’re doing needs to be enough. We are all doing our best giving the circumstances and bars should be lowered or somehow changed.

How are your teenagers doing after all these weeks of remote learning?

How does this all affect them, and you?

Please share in the comments.
And I’m off for a break – but will be back in… 20 mins or 30… hm… not sure …

Life is not a long fleuve tranquille , we all have our challenges to deal with. What helps me since my own teenage years is Nietsches’ What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. – I admit that sometimes I wonder how strong does one need to become?!
Fact is, that I am very proud of where we are now. – Be prepared, this is a long post…

We parents learn a lot from our children

We learn more from our children than from any parenting book. This is something I love about being a parent! It is the hardest job and it doesn’t come with a course book, or a guarantee for success. It is the most amazing journey but also the most daunting one. It is a 24/7 job.

Our children teach us to slow down, to focus on every-single-step, they actually teach us mindfulness, and they teach us to question our values and beliefs (over and over again!). What I love the most is that they teach us to be flexible and coherent at the same time. It seems impossible but it’s not!

Every step our children take, we have the great chance to admire and enjoy it. Unfortunately, many of us parents tend to get caught into a rat race, where it is more about whose child speaks first, walks first, eats solid food first, gets into the gym team (first), has higher grades, gets accepted into the most prestigious University, has the best job, earns more money etc.

I say unfortunately, because we risk to loose our children along the way.

We think what is good for them and tend to guide them with such a determination that they naturally follow our lead.

It starts with putting them on the jacket (maybe I’m warm…), choosing the right shoes for them (I prefer the other ones…), convincing them about the importance of maths and science (there are other subjects too…!), that it is good to try out numbers of sports (and if I don’t like sports, or those you suggest?…), be consistent in one (why only one?!). And no, we’re not helicopter parents.

“We just want what is good for our children” is what many parents say.

But, honestly, how do we know what is good for them? What makes us be so sure that the path we see (and choose!) for them is the one that is good for them? Who are we to make them do things they are not ready or prepared for, or willing to do? – Whoever says that we’re doing this because we want that our children don’t have to experience certain situations, is not doing them any favor!

Our children will make their own experiences, at their time, with their pace and with their consequences.

If we, parents, recognize patterns in situations or behaviors, that can lead to consequences that were hard for us: it was about us, not them!

I don’t mean that we don’t learn from experiences, we do, and we learn a lot from history, from the past – I am the first to say that history is one of the most important subjects taught at school (and beyond) – but we have to take experiences as what they are. They are things-that-happened-in-certain-circumstances-with-particular-consequences: they are not universal law. They are somewhere on a continuum from objective to subjective that is very difficult to define and to sum up in a post. And this is exactly what makes parenting so difficult: when should we draw the line between our experience and the one of our children? How much should we guide them? And what does this even mean?

I’m one of those mothers who don’t push their children.

In the past, I let my children decide what jacket to put on, I don’t push so they go to the highest maths group, and I don’t push them to go to university.

I don’t care what other parents think. I don’t care what my parents think about the way I’m raising my children. I make many mistakes, but I have no problem to own them. I apologize to my children when I do. They know that I am not perfect and that I don’t know everything. Since they were very young I would say “I don’t know, let’s find out together”, and I am sure this made them not consider adults as know-it-all – and lead them quite often to question adults (teachers and educators too).

I spent days (and nights) thinking about what kind of consequences my decisions might have, and what consequences my childrens’ decisions might have.

I’m not a laid back mother. I worried a lot in the past, especially because I didn’t have parents who would take care of our children. We live too far away and my parents are not the kind who would offer to take care of our three children so that my husband and I could have some time “off” parenting. I know many expat families can, but we couldn’t.

I know now that I was anxious at times, and that this reflected in my parenting style. But what I recently discovered is, that my anxiety wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from the expectations of our society, our community, our extended family and friends. When I realized this a few years ago, I decided to let me guide by my children.

I am growing with my children

Yes, I am literally growing with my children. They show me the way. They show me what they like, what they dislike, what makes them happy, what makes them anxious (yes, we dealt with some serious anxiety issues in the past) and what helps them recover from setbacks.

What I have learnt in the past years is that the more I let my children decide and deal with the consequences, the better we all are off. We discuss a lot about the decisions. But instead of anticipating our children with possible consequences of their decisions, we ask them what they think a consequence could be, we explore them together and we let them make their own experiences.
Sometimes it is better to not mention a negative outcome, because we could spoil the opportunity for them to actually have a very positive experience!

The growing with my children also means to let them go. The first steps that took them further away from me/us when they were toddlers are now leading further and further away, but I am happy for them that they have the confidence and the capacity to do so.

I also grow with them because I don’t want to grow apart from them. My lovely three teenagers show me every day what they can do, what they want, what they fear and what they love: and this changes regularly.

This flexibility is healthy for them and for me. I don’t like putting people in boxes, define them based on their capacities, preferences, etc., so, this flexibility helps me to always consider all the options my children (and I!) have. – It is an amazing journey that my husband and I are very grateful to be able to experience!

(This was in 2019…)

Update in 2021

We have had a surreal year, determined by the many uncertainties of the pandemic, many losses and many moments of frustration, loneliness and desperation. As I mentioned before, our children should be allowed to have the opportunity to make their experiences, make mistakes, be happy, sad, fail and get up again. This past year has asked a lot from all of us: to be patient for what seems an eternity, to follow rules (when rules were not respected by others), to stay positive (although “staying negative” with regards to the pandemic meant to keep distance from friends, family etc.), to “soldier on” (whilst nobody could give any direction where we were and still are (!) headed).
What seemed something that could end in a few months, is not going to end soon, and our children have changed a lot due to the pandemic. They have learned what being lonely is.
They have learned to adjust to the ever changing expectations from school: on- and off-line teaching, teachers struggling with the all so many online channels through which they transmitted (or thought to transmit) their knowledge, they did their best to understand that the curriculum seemed more important than their sanity, tried to make sense of time tables changing every few months. And then there was that uncertainty concerning final exams in the middle of all of this.

Our friends changed: there are those who still check in with us, and those who have become oddly silent. For us adults it is easier as we have “been there” (i.e. been teenagers), but for our children it’s not. They should be making their experiences themselves, and instead they watch Netflix series about it, discussing about what they would do if… in a future (“far far away…”) they were in a similar situation.

This pandemic has taken away a year of healthy social interactions for our children in a phase where they shouldn’t stay home all the time. Someone compared it with times of war, but it’s not comparable. In times of war, people would still be able to see friends, hug, form relationships etc. It’s not the same now.

This past year I have experienced so much wisdom from my children. They reminded us to put on the mask, to stay one more step away from the neighbour, to wash hands. They are very conscious and disciplined. They have also suffered when seeing peers meeting in groups whilst numbers of infections were getting up. Realizing that this world is full or irresponsible people is not reassuring for a young adult! On the contrary. It makes you doubt about the world’s sanity. In those moments we looked at the broader picture and actually wished so many times to live in a more group oriented society, where individualism, the individual’s right wasn’t the first thing people would think of. We looked at history, how people have dealt with this kind of situations in the past, how it would have been different if this had happened only 10 years ago. We learned to keep being optimistic and to not let us distract from what others do, how others think about it and what other people’s expectations are (with regards to their personal freedom).
We have learned a lot about ourselves and about our family. Our children have grown, matured this year, but managed to balance their sadness and lonely moments with moments of joy, shared silliness and laughter.

What about you? How was it for you this past year?

What are you learning from your children? – Please let me know in the comments here below!

We are living in an international community with a great amount of parents from the UK, Australia and the US, and among our friends, the question whether to send a child to a boarding school or not comes up regularly.

I am the kind of mother that couldn’t imagine being separated from my children, not until they’re 18 or whenever they are ready to go. Yes, I’m a “mamma italiana” type of mother, or a “Glucke” how it’s called in German: I like having my children around me. I love being a mother and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to spend plenty of time with my children, I want them in my life and want to take part of their daily life.

This is why it was very difficult for me to accept and understand how a parent could send a child under 18 to a boarding school. Especially because it means, in our situation, to send him or her to a school that is in another country, hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of kilometers away.

Sending children to boarding schools is more common in some societies than in others and some of my British friends started talking about sending their children to boarding school when they were still quite young.

I couldn’t understand how a mother of a 5 year old could already make plans to send her son to a boarding school at age 8 or 10. They were making plans on trips they would “finally do” with their husbands/partners when their children would be “away”. It sounded like the children were a nuisance. It took me quite some time to understand their point of view, their world view and look at it all from another perspective. – I still struggle with this mentality, but I understand where it comes from.

The UK has a rich history of boarding schools which reflects in one of the most read books in the past years, Harry Potter. Children from around the world read about life in a surreal boarding school, far away from home, without parents being active part of their daily lives, and they accompany these fictive characters for several years through adventures, sad and happy moments. I read Hanni und Nanni (aka St. Clairs) by Enid Blyton, when I was 10 and wondered sometimes how it would be to grow up in a boarding school. It seemed like a very exotic way to live to me. – But reading books about the life of fictive characters in that situation and living it yourself are two very different animals…

Boarding schools in Britain started in medieval times “when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where a lone literate cleric could be found”, but the institution has adapted itself to changing social circumstances over 1000 years. During the colonial expansion of the British Empire, they became highly popular as they ensured education to children of British colonial administrators.

“in some societies children enter at an earlier age than in others. In some societies, a tradition has developed in which families send their children to the same boarding school for generations. One observation that appears to apply globally is that a significantly larger number of boys than girls attend boarding school and for a longer span of time. The practice of sending children, particularly boys, to other families or to schools so that they could learn together is of very long standing, recorded in classical literature and in UK records going back over 1,000 years. ” (more information here)

If for some local families, sending their children to a boarding school means to help them develop wider horizons than their family can provide, families who spend many years living abroad, boarding schools represent the often unique opportunity for their children to get in touch with their heritage culture, its values, customs and beliefs during their childhood years.

Knowing about the historical background of sending children to boarding schools helped me to be more understanding.

When I saw this video some time ago, I started questioning the reasons that brought the parents to send their children to a boarding school.

I understand that if a parent grew up like this and saw the benefits of it, he probably wants his children make the same experience. Many parents don’t question the way they were brought up and assume that what was good for them is automatically beneficial for their children too.

I personally wonder if this option is not a way to escape parenthood at an earlier stage, a kind of handing over a child to someone else – like it’s said in this video by one of the educators.

I have several friends who have sent their children to boarding schools and I see them suffer, I see them keeping up the “brave facade” that I see back in the video here above. They don’t meet with others when they are sad and lonely, and when they feel some tears coming up when among friends, they say they’re “being silly”.

Sometimes they share their grief, the grief of a premature empty nest, the grief of not seeing their children grow up, become teenagers and young adults, the grief of not really being part of their childrens’ life. They are the bereaved. And there is the fear that their children may not want to come back and visit in the future, that they will resent their decisions. They are lonely and abandoned.

I understand that for many internationals who move frequently, a boarding school gives some continuity their children usually miss, but I can’t but wonder: why would they choose a life far away from their children, a life that tears their family apart? Isn’t it one of the reasons we have children, to raise them ourselves, and not to let this part to someone else, some stranger?

I have seen children suffering because of frequent moves. I have seen these children being sent to boarding school because of their suffering. I honestly doubt that being separated from their parents, who usually are the pillar and only constance in their young life, is the best and healthiest solution.

I could go on and on writing about this topic but I leave it here, open… for everyone who reads this continue the discussion in the comments.

I surely am not here to judge.

Like one of the mothers says at the end of the video: I wonder what the long term effect is on children who are growing up like this. When children are separated from their parents it always has an effect on everyone involved, and there is not one right solution that fits all.

Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs there are, because it involves emotions, requires tough decisions, and leaves us with many doubts, uncertainties that affect us because they involve people we love.

Ruth van Reken wrote a very important book about her own experience at boarding schools. Letters never sent is a collection of letters she never sent to her mother, where she shares her thoughts, experiences, her sad moments, her worries.

I can also recommend Unrooted Childhoods,a collection of stories from adults who grew up abroad.

What is your opinion or experience with sending children to boarding school? Please share it in the comments here below.

I wasn’t really surprised to find out that the Repair Café was initiated by the Dutch Martine Postma in 2007 in Amsterdam, and that it has been a great success since. Martine started the Repair Café Foundation in 2009, a non-profit organisation, “that provided professional support to local groups in the Netherlands and other countries wishing to start their own Repair Café”, and she even wrote a  book about it (in Dutch).

On the site you can find out where to find the closest Repair Café in your area:

And if there is none, they have a great guideline about how you can start one, after all, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel…:

This step-by-step manual is based on our years of experience, and guides you through all the different stages of setting up your own Repair Café: from finding local repair experts and a suitable location, to collecting the right tools, creating publicity, finding funds for your initiative etc.

What I like about this idea is not only the fact that we get the chance to learn how to repair items even if we are not a professional – we can get help at those Cafés! – but it’s the mindset. Why throw away if you can repair it? Many times we choose to buy new because repairing is way too expensive, and I admit that I did it several times in the past. But many items can actually be fixed with less expense. There are shops that have spare parts – one has only to find them… In these Repair Cafés you can ask people about that and maybe you’re lucky and find even someone who has an idea how to repair it.
Repairing is to give things a new chance – and sometimes purpose. I like this idea because it is one of the things I want my children to learn: that we can fix things, that items can be repaired. I want them to grow up with what I call the repairing-mindset (I’ll explain it more in another post soon), because it will help them to be more conscientious and respectful for things they/we own.

Not throwing away things, but trying to fix them is in line with the buy-nothing-new-month movement, a “global movement for collective, conscientious consumption” and the idea started in Melbourne and spread to the Netherlands and the USA.

Since I wrote about this buy-nothing-new-month a few years ago, in our family we tend to expand this month over the whole year. It’s not about not buying anything at all – we all need food and items for our household that we still need to buy. It’s more about reflecting on what we “need” and what we “want”, and if the things we want are really so indispensable – and if they really need to be bought new…

I personally like the idea of knowing how to fix things, to reuse them, maybe by giving them another purpose; and I like the idea of my non-needed/wanted items to find a new home and make someone else happy.

– What are the items you repair? Do you throw away the items you no longer use or need, or do you give them away?

What children really want, is to tell us that they need to express something. And we should “listen”.

Most children hide their feelings of fear at an early age. They pick up on our uneasiness with their big feelings. We try to get them not to cry, we distract them when they’re upset, we try to fix things so they won’t have an upset. I would wager that most of us parents give at least ten strong signals a day that we don’t like our children to show us how they feel. So their fears go underground, where these powerful feelings cause trouble. They eventually surface not in crying or clinging or a full-out screaming response, but in hitting and biting and pushing other children.

Sometimes a toddler would also laugh while hitting. Adults usually would respond with reprimanding this very “bad” behaviour, which will not really solve the problem.

Hitting is usually a sign that the child is troubled by something. When a child hits other children in school, teachers usually appoint the parents and try to find out what may cause this behaviour. Sadly, many parents would probably think of a kind of punishment for their children instead of approaching this problem with empathy.

When a child hits – it can be also an older child! – there is always a reason for it, and the fact itself that the child chooses a physical way to express his or her frustration, is a sign that he/she needs some support to channel those emotions in a way that it’s not hurtful for him/her or others. – It seems a contradiction in terms, but a child that pushes others away (by hitting, teasing etc.) is usually trying to say that he/she needs and seeks attention, care and help.

In the post “When Your Toddler Hits You: A New Perspective“, Laura Podowski gives very useful advice on how to interpret this kind of behaviour and how to address a toddler who is hitting others.

The main thing one should do is to actively listen to the child. Not only what he/she has to say, but to understand what causes this behaviour and address it with the child. – If you want to help your child to tell you what is going on, there are many sites with emotion-cards like these ones:

Children learn to express their feelings, frustrations by copying what we do. If we, as adults, are able to explain why at a certain moment we are nervous, anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, happy, excited etc., they will be able to do the same. Toddlers can learn this even if they are not yet talking much. They can use signs to express frustrations and they can learn to name their feelings and, by mirroring our behaviour, they will be able to tell what is going on and what they need.

In her article, Laura Podowski presents some examples of interactions with toddlers.

Although I fully agree with her approach, I must add that toddlers can’t really understand negations. If we tell a toddler “don’t touch the stove”, he probably will touch it right away. Not because he wasn’t listening, but because the whole concept of negation is not yet clear. What he really hears is “touch the stove”.

If we tell our toddler who is hitting “don’t hit me, I don’t like it”, he will hear “hit me, I like it”. Saying “stay away from the stove” or “stop hitting me, it hurts me” gives a much clearer message. – I will explain the use and comprehension of negation in another post soon.