Category Archives: School

Rant alert: A mother’s comeuppance

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Last year, our morning routine was too good to be true: BB was picked up by bus and whisked off to school in a blink, while LB went to a nursery inside our compound.

Workwise, I could do a whole day in the office as a freelance, or bits and pieces at home – the sum of which were a drop in the ocean really in terms of the household budget, but at least made me feel like I was contributing in some small way.

But kids, they tend to start growing up, don’t they? And so it’s still something of a shock to me that this year I have two boys in two different schools (the hope is that in about 3 years’ time, the waiting list fairy will smile on us and BB will join his brother).

Why such an early school start? I’ve heard that in Australia, children with a 9.15am start go surfing first

“You have to leave by 7.20am to get to LB’s school,” my good friend warned, with a knowing, slightly worried look clouding her eyes (she knows I’m not great in the mornings).

And today, I found out why. Despite this school being nearby, to get there for the 7.50am start, you need to set out at least half an hour before to avoid the argy-bargying that goes on round the roundabaout, the tussle for parking spots and the queue snaking its way from the highway.

The drop-off completed on the late side, I headed back to our compound, thinking positive thoughts about going to the gym and getting groceries – all before 8.45am.

Thwarted. A power cut meant another hot and sticky, Bikram-style workout and at the store, it was as if Halloween had come early, with an assistant taking shoppers round with a torch, shining the beam down the dark aisles like a policeman scanning a dingy alleyway for baddies.

But my biggest bugbear this morning: LB is only at school for what feels like 20 minutes. His pick-up is earlier than nursery, just about giving mums enough time to do the shopping, come home, put the kettle on and go to the loo before heading back to the school to collect a child who will need entertaining all afternoon.

How being back on the school run, with less child-free time than before, feeling like a shadowy figure at the other school (BB’s back on the bus, bless him) and foraging around the grocery store with a flashlight is progress, I’m not sure.

I’m not going to get any work done this year, am I?

Rant over. Tomorrow I’ll beat the time thief. I’ll be out the door at 7.20am. Sharp.

Back to school: The Dubai drop off

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Mothers across Dubai were either breathing a huge sigh of relief or sobbing into their hankies this morning as they dropped their children at school for the start of the new term.

But rather than simply depositing your offspring into the classroom roughly on time, it seems there are plenty of tactics you can use (some of them underhand) if you want to achieve a flawless drop off. Much is doubtless universal, but there are certainly some skills that are specific to Dubai schools.

Tips and tricks:

● Even if you only drop off one child, make sure you drive your 7-seater SUV right up to the school gates.

● Drive at speed, prepare to race other parents from the red light, bully your way round the roundabouts and take every opportunity to jump the queue.

Creating the illusion of a six-hour workout is a useful skill

● Ignore the car parking attendants and remember to cut up your best friend to get that prime parking spot.

● When alighting from your car, greet your friend with a cheery smile and a wave.

● Pay special attention to your chosen outfit. Currently trending is gym wear, preferably black. Whether or not you actually go straight to the gym from the drop off is entirely irrelevant.

● Make sure you and your children are perfectly laundered. Even the slightest trace of toothpaste, breakfast cereal, chocolate, snot, vom or poo will make itself glaringly apparent at the worst moment.

● Although a huge pair of sunglasses will hide a plethora of cosmetic tardiness, make sure your nails are perfect and you hair is pristine.

● Do not rush or run. Do not push or drag your child. Irrespective of what is actually happening, glide serenely through the school with a relaxed and happy expression.

● Greet each member of staff and wish them good morning. Train your children to do the same.

● When engaging in small talk with other parents keep to the following subjects: how charming the children are, how much the children are growing, how lovely everyone looks, the weather.

● Never admit to another mother any homework not done, lost library books, tantrums endured either at home or in the car, diarrhoea or head lice.

● Of course, all of the above also applies during pick up – although you must ensure that whatever you wear is entirely different from the outfit you were sporting only a few hours earlier.

● The only possible exception to this rule is you may return in the same gym wear, creating the aura of a potential six-hour work out. Sweat patches, however, are not acceptable.

Organised Mum’s fait accompli

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My boys are attending different schools this academic year (long story), so this week, whilst prodding them with an iron poker to prevent them napping in the car, I’ve been running from pillar to post, spending a small fortune on two sets of (different) uniforms, shoes, lunch boxes and water cups.

I’ve tried really hard to get it right, to make sure each boy is kitted out properly, with well-fitting shorts and shirts, that are labelled, and with hats that I know will get lost (due to the sun, there’s a no-hat/no-play policy).

You think you’ll just get it done on time, then you bump into her: Organised Mum. Yummy mummy-of-three-hen-pecked-children extraordinaire.

Organised Mum browses the uniform store at leisure, while everyone else’s shopping trip screeches to a halt due to the out-of-stock hats

You meet her at the uniform shop – except she’s not there to buy uniforms. She bought those in June, long before the store ran out of book bags and PE shirts. She’s there to buy a new wall planner, because last year’s didn’t have enough space for all their extra curricula activities.

“Are you ready for school?” she trills, with the smug air of someone who could quite easily spend this week by the pool. “Olivia can’t wait for school to start, can you darling?”

You see, Organised Mum has every reason to gloat, because she spent her entire summer planning for this moment. The Organised family went to the Rockies to climb mountains in July, with two weeks in St Tropez on the way back. But she never took her eye off the start of the new term.

Her children were measured and fitted for shoes on a stop-over in London; haircuts were done at Vidal Sassoon in Mayfair; her maid sewed satin labels on while they were away; and she restocked their stationery supplies with some stylish new lines sold exclusively at a French boutique.

Organised Mum has all the time in the world this week, and it’s beyond her that other mothers might still be buying last-minute uniforms. She finds a wall planner she likes and asks at the till if she can pre-order a diary for 2013. As she discusses typefaces, the working mothers in the line behind her, with approximately 10 minutes to get all their back-to-school supplies and get back to their desks, start silently cursing.

She leaves her details and the queue exhales a sigh of relief as she moves aside, but she’s not finished yet. With Mr Organised, a big cheese in oil pipelines, away in Saudi, she fancies a little more adult interaction and asks what activities we’re signing up for this term.

“We’re doing some extra French tuition,” she says. “The girls practised so hard on holiday. Go on, Trixabelle, say something in French. She sounds so clever when she speaks French.

“And we’ll be at the swimming trials, of course. Harry was very inspired by the Olympics … You never know!” she tinkles proudly.

“Maybe see you at the pool later,” she calls, as she breezes out the door into the sunshine.

Maybe not, Organised Mum. Some of us still have shopping to do.

The transition from work to mummydom

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I’ve come to the conclusion that never mind massages and spa treatments, what I really need after work and before going head first into a long weekend with two small boys is a decompression chamber.

It was nice and quiet down there! Anyone else feel like they get the bends when they transition from work to home?

Maybe it’s just me, but after being in an office where everyone sits still, the computer more or less does what it’s told and the noise levels are fairly muted, suddenly being reintroduced to the demands of two energetic boys is like surfacing too fast from relatively tranquil depths.

The decibels, the goading, the speed at which the boys fly round the house, the way they ricochet off the walls (summer temps mean we can’t exercise them outside), their neediness after my absence – whilst I’m overjoyed to be back home, it makes me feel quite giddy.

So, now it’s the weekend – and it’s a long one because Sunday, when we usually all go back to work and school, is a holiday for the ascension of Prophet Mohammad. And DH is out of the picture because he’s ‘in the Sim’ – airline lingo for training in the simulator, during which they practice fires, engine failures and other such scenarios.

My mind is thinking about something less terrifying but which has left me scratching my head nevertheless – BB’s homework.

It’s that time of term again when instead of doing the usual spellings and reading for homework, he has to complete a project – and present it – for his end-of term summative assessment. All very well, but he’s six. Some of his classmates are five. They’re in kindergarten!

Last week he had to design a ‘mode of transport’, this week he has to create it. There was the option of using Lego, but that would have been too easy. He’s opted to junk model a train, and so I’ve spent much of the week collecting boxes, buying art supplies and wondering how to turn cereal packets and toilet rolls into an express train.

As my working friend put it, there’s no way such young children can do these projects on their own. So when little Johnny comes home from school and says he has to create a solar system, it’s mum who ends up printing off stuff at work, coming up with ideas (styrofoam balls on sticks? genius!), and cajoling a child who can’t sit still for two minutes (heaven knows how mine gets through six hours of school) into completing the project. On time.

And, with all the tiger-mothering that goes on in Dubai (including presentations by seven-year-olds on iPads!), you really need to make sure your child takes it seriously. BB’s told me some of his classmates have brought their projects in early. On display already, there’s a rocket made out of bottles, a flying car and a train with wooden wheels.

By the end of this week, I’m fully expecting there to be 4by4s made from matchsticks, robotic trucks and remote-controlled airplanes.

I’d better get back to those loo rolls…

The student-led conference

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Back in my day, parent-teacher conferences involved mums and dads trooping into the classroom at allotted times to talk to the teacher, with the student otherwise occupied elsewhere.

Knowing full well you were being discussed, you had little choice but to wait nervously – your ears ablaze – until your parents returned and you could gauge the expression on their faces as they walked through the door.

How times change.

Today we went to my six-year-old’s school for his student-led conference – which I presume are becoming popular the world over.

The information reminded forgetful parents to express pride in their children's progress and provided sample questions!

We’d been prepped by the school beforehand with a letter telling us what to do. It would be a ‘non-teaching day’ (which, and I did have to think about this, was a fancy way of saying ‘a day off for the kids’) with 30-minute slots for each child/parent combo.

The idea was for your child to take you through his or her work in the classroom. In case this whole concept was beyond us, we were advised to be supportive, be positive, be curious and to listen to our children.

A slight, okay glaring, error on my part meant our son was the only child not in school uniform when we rolled up for our turn (DH and I both looked at each other as if to say, “do you not read the emails?”), but I think I made up for it by asking BB lots of questions. Whilst lavishing praise, my journalism training meant I practically quizzed him and what I’d heard about these conferences was right: the kids jump at the chance to show off their work.

One of the books was a diary and, on further inspection, I realised his teacher must know everything about what we do as a family. Our trip to an airport museum in Sharjah, outings on the monorail, parties and visitors – it was all there, coloured in and with scrawly handwriting in places. Thank goodness there weren’t any pictures of mummy sitting on the sofa, glued to the iPad (phew).

As we went through his ‘portfolio’, the teacher was obviously listening from behind her desk, but wasn’t participating – BB did most of the talking and thoroughly enjoyed it.

At the end, as we were leaving, I nudged DH to remind him he’d wanted to ask the teacher about something on BB’s report card. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ll wait till next time.”

Kids – when it comes to student-led conferences, you’re onto a winner!

The school assessment

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It might only feel like yesterday that the Little Boy was born, but here in Dubai children can start school at three – providing they pass ‘The Assessment’, in which your kid is expected to perform tricks like a monkey. Except it would probably be easier taking a monkey along than a stroppy three year old.

“We should have got his hair cut,” lamented DH, as I tried to comb LB’s overgrown mop into a tidy style on the morning of his first assessment last week. “And done more prep. A captain I flew with told me they’d done loads of prep with their son.”

“It’s ok,” I retorted. “He’s great with colours – and he knows all our names. Watch,” I said, running through our family names, only hitting a problem when it came to my name. “Cath-wynn,” he replied. Erm, close (she’s our nanny) but no!

“He can hold a pen – and count in no particular order,” I ventured, grasping at straws at this point.

Bittersweet: It's hard to believe that in the autumn I'll have two boys at school!

This assessment – for a nearby school so popular it has a 10-year waiting list – was the easy one out of the two schools we’re applying to because we didn’t have to be there. A teacher came to LB’s nursery and ‘observed him’. All we had to do was get him there by 8 in the morning and keep our fingers crossed that he didn’t bite anyone in front of her.

I knew all along that today’s assessment for his older brother’s school would be harder, for several reasons. It was at 7.45am, we had to go with him, and every time we take him to BB’s school, it’s to ride bikes in the kindergarten play area, not be asked questions by a complete stranger with a clip board in a room full of kids he doesn’t know.

As I filled in a form about LB’s behaviour, routine, strengths and weaknesses, I was acutely aware I’d come across as a complete liar. “He enjoys playing with children,” I put, as LB – who’d just thrown the predicted tantrum over not being allowed to go to the school play area with his brother – clung to me for dear life.

“He’ll play independently,” I wrote, while DH tried to prize him off me, with no luck.

“And his love of Lego suggests a future Norman Foster … That is, if the accuracy he displays when throwing things at his brother’s head doesn’t lead him to play sport competitively,” I toyed with the idea of putting.

With ALL the other kids playing happily, DH and I tried using bribery, coercion and even logic to get him to participate, until finally a teacher came over and asked if he was part of the assessment. “YES … It might not look like it, but yes!” I fumed in my head… “Certainly not here, Mrs Clip Board, at this ungodly hour for the fun of it.”

If it sounds like I was getting stressed, I was.

From this point, it actually got a bit better. He ran through the colours, mumbled a few words, and drew a train. He flunked the numbers and refused to jump when asked (“That’s just silly,” I could tell he was thinking), but it was enough.

They emailed later to say that – pending receipt of his birth certificate, passport, visa, his fourth-cousin-once-removed’s passport, nursery reports from birth, finger print, iris scan and 20 passport photos – Monkey Boy was in.

In return, a G&T at the door would have helped. A lot.

Jet-setting grandparents

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As I mentioned earlier this week, BB’s class is nearing the end of a Unit of Enquiry (the lingo in the international curriculum) into how things have changed over time.

We’ve all worked quite hard on this, completing a questionnaire asking things like, ‘Did you have a television back in your day? Or a washing machine?’, working on a poster as homework and going along with the premise that our kids think we’re really quite old.

With a shared love of train sets, BB and his Grandad can hang out for hours

They’ve even had grandparents into the school to meet the class and talk about life in the past.

This led BB to come home asking me why his grandparents don’t live with us.

Imagining one big happy household crammed full to the rafters with his Nanny and Grandad from England and his Jiddo and Tata from Lebanon, he thought this would be a marvellous set up for everyone.

“Well, dear, we do try to see them as much as possible,” I replied “and we’re really very lucky that you have such jet-setting grandparents.”

“Ummm,” he sighed, a little dejectedly, clearly not persuaded that this was enough. And then dropped a clanger, said in a way only cheeky but affectionate little boys can get away with:

“If Grandad lived with us, I could count the hairs on his head.”

A note on competitive parents

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Homework for kindergarten kids is a new concept to me, but I hear that it really kicks off from next term and can be a nightly battle.

To prepare BB’s class of five and six year olds for this, they had their first proper assignment this weekend – the kids had to research an object, such as a toy, television or car, and produce a poster at home, showing what the object looked like in the past and what it looks like today.

And the most worrisome bit: ‘Your child will then present the poster to the whole class as part of their summative assessment,’ the teacher told us.

And, believe me, this made me nervous. Not just about the presenting part, or actually making the poster, but because you wouldn’t believe how competitive expat parents in Dubai can be.

“I know, let’s visit the museum this weekend to do some fact-finding,” I imagined the other mums saying. “And work on some mock-ups first. Even better, why don’t we fly to London to browse the British Museum.” “Yes, and once we’ve finished the conceptuals, we can do a historical key in PowerPoint,” their DHs, getting into the swing of it, probably reply. “That’ll really knock the socks off the teacher.”

BB and I finally got down to it on Saturday afternoon, his attention captured momentarily because I stole an idea from the recent National Day celebrations – a classic car parade! It kept him focused for, ooh, all of 30 minutes, before he legged it to the play area.

Two hours later, I’d finished the poster, cleaned up the mess and hidden it so BB’s little brother wouldn’t scribble all over it – just in time to start thinking about dinner.

I think I’m going to be busy next term, when homework really gets going.

Colouring, cutting, sticking - I was in my element!

On falling in love with the bus nanny

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The most wonderful thing came into our lives recently. Yellow and long, with chunky wheels, squeaky brakes and snotty noses pressed against the window.

It is, of course, the school bus and it saves us two hours a day through no longer trotting backwards and forwards on the school run.

We were on the waiting list for a year and, even now, BB’s ride home is only on ‘stand-by’, but so far there’s been space every day.

With a hop and a skip, he greets the bus nanny on board!

And, though only five years old, it makes him seem so grown up, so independent, all of a sudden. On hearing the bus come trundling down the hill, he bolts outside in a flash.

The doors clap shut and that’s it, he’s gone – his toast left half eaten on the sofa and cartoons still blaring from the TV. The first day I felt quite bereft.

Until I realised I could actually go back to bed for a bit.

Of course, I’ve worried about the ‘what ifs?’ – what mother wouldn’t? – especially as Dubai drivers tend to behave as though they’re riding the dodgems at the fairground and the highways here have at least eight lanes.

But he’s so excited by the bus buddies he’s made – and has fallen in love.

Buses in Dubai for primary school children have bus nannies on board. Ours is a sweet-natured lady from India with a kind smile and beautiful eyes. Her name is Shabina and, most likely, she has kids of her own back home, living with grandparents so she can earn money for their keep in Dubai.

Her days are dedicated to riding EK1 to school, waiting while the children are in lessons, then travelling back to our compound in the afternoon.

It’s not as easy as it sounds – she’s tasked with maintaining order on board and making sure all the kids keep their seat belts – and clothes – on (yes, really, last year someone stripped apparently).

Early this morning, I found BB writing a love note to Shabina on a card he’d made for her. “Muuum-mee, can you help me?” he asked, somewhat sheepishly. “I want to put ‘I love you bus nanny'”

Then he wrapped up a scented candle that was sitting on our bedside table (not a car or a train, like he usually chooses, but a candle! Surprisingly thoughtful!)

He’s adamant he’d rather we didn’t pick him up from school, like we did the other day to surprise him, because he’d prefer to ride home with his beloved bus nanny, who is so sweet she apparently even gives him a good-bye kiss.

So my big boy has his first school-boy crush and thinks he’s going to marry Shabina. When he’s 18 and reading this, he’s going to kill me for spilling the beans!

And if, like many of the Indian, Sri Lankan and Filipino workers over here, she does have her own children, I really hope she gets to go home to see them as often as possible.

School’s closed! School’s closed!

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BB’s school has hit the media.

Saw it first while peering over the shoulder of someone reading 7DAYS in Costa Coffee.

Then got online and found the headline in The National newspaper: “School closed in poisonous gas alert”.

I clicked on the link to read what I already knew, that “the school has been shut down for the rest of the week because of what Civil Defence officials describe as ‘poisonous gases’ from a smouldering fire at a nearby chemical factory.”

Great. It’s all so Dubai.

And I’m feeling like the worst mother in the world because when the initial evacuation took place last week, I didn’t leap up to collect him, as I knew the bus would bring him and I had work to do, but then the kids ended up waiting on the bus (breathing in those noxious nasties?) while the ensuing chaos was sorted out.

They were also in school for the first two days this week. Apparently, it’s all a big precaution and we needn’t worry, but that still leaves us with the kids at home – unable to believe their luck that they’re off school, but bored out of their minds nevertheless.

I vaguely remember from childhood that over-the-moon feeling I got the few times school was shut due to strikes or snow – and now I understand the problem it left my working mother with.

So BB’s lolling on the sofa, stealing my iPad and at regular intervals yelling his head off about having nothing to do. There’s only so much time a child can spend watching YouTube and playing computer games before side effects like this kick in.

It feels like school holidays all over again.

Meanwhile, a wonderful friend of mine has, coincidentally, just started at the school in a PR/communications role and is having one helluva first week.

Roll on Sunday!

An enormous explosion sent a fireball hundreds of metres into the air - and there were apparently more than 70 different industrial and food chemicals stored in the warehouse


PICTURE CREDITS: The National, Gaming Bus