8th-10th July 2022 - Post Comment Love - a busy week.

Welcome back to #PoCoLo with Stephanie from Lifeat139a and I.

I apologise for the delay in commenting and sharing posts, it's been busy 2 weeks with work, selling the flat in South Wales and a visit to clean, booking flights to Australia, organising additional work projects, my birthday weekend and the worry about our Grandsons surgery, which all went well and he's back home now. I just haven't spent much time on social media. I'm spending this evening online to rectify this.

The summerhouse is being delivered and erected today, so hopefully next week I'll be able to update the garden posts and we can start work on the rest of the garden. I've spent a lot of time in the front, which is south facing and I've planted a hedge along the boundary with the pavement.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Want to find out more about Post Comment Love #PoCoLo? 

My job as a Teaching Assistant.

I returned to full time work in March this year, after an 11 year break, minus 18 months 2016/2017 teaching in a school in Dubai. I've had other jobs from volunteering in townships to working in a covid vaccination site to working as a TV assistant on the European Golf Tour.

My last teaching job in the UK was delivering and assessing NVQ III students in the work place as Teaching Assistants. It was a role I wanted to return to initially, but with such a long time since I'd taught, getting interviews was difficult. I saw a post advertised at child 4's old school and was offered the job.

I arrive in work on my bike, in the car or on foot, via the swimming pool at 8.30am and leave at 3pm. I have no planning, no marking, no assessments.

I have 2 lessons, a 15 minute break, 2 lessons, 30 minute lunch, 2 lessons and home. I rarely stay past 3pm unless I want to, to send emails or updates students notes.

In interview when asked what my career progression was I replied that I didn't have one. I'm more than happy to do this role until I retire. I have all the school holidays off, other than 2 teacher training days, in which we can travel, visit our children and grandchildren in.

It's perfect.

Apart from the standard English, Maths, Science, Geography and History, I also support students in Home Economics, Design and Technology, Music, Art and Drama. We've been doing Performance Poetry on stage, I've been helping two classes with making a bottle opener from metal and plastic to baking, making hats, gloves and cushions

I have 2 regular students I support for around 12 lessons a week and around 10 other students I see on a regular basis and randomly cover other students if I'm needed. I work with years 7,8 & 9.

I love the variety of lessons I'm involved with. I have a good relationship with the students and the class teachers. I regularly support the rest of the students in the classes and often have to deal with behaviour issues when it disrupts me or my SEN students from working.

Most of the teachers are happy for me to do what I do in addition to the SEN students, handing out books, ensuring students have the correct equipment and supporting them with behaviour in the classroom to enable learning.

A couple of teachers have their way of doing things and quite often in my opinion have little control over the class and it can be very chaotic with little learning taking place. The same students work really hard in other lessons, despite being generally noisy regardless.

In addition to the SEN with my allocated students, I find myself dealing with bullying, safeguarding and injury during lesson change over and on my way to and from work. I've broken up fights on my way home and dealt with incidents on the way into school. I have a strong duty of care when I see someone in trouble and have an overwhelming urge to help. Some may say it's interfering or being a busy body, bt I can't ignore acts of unkindness, injury or safeguarding concerns.

I'm refreshing my knowledge, I'm recalling my own education and I'm learning new things everyday. I'm confident to say to a student or teacher, I don't know something and we will find out together how to work the answer out, which to me is the whole point of being a teaching assistant, to facilitate learning.

I supported a year 8 student with working out a maths problem, when the teacher asked him the answer and how he worked it out, he replied with '4' and 'Miss told me' 

I enjoy spending some of my break time playing table tennis, jenga and supporting students with their homework, not just the SEN children, but anyone who asks me for help.

Do you have experience as a teaching assistant? Does or did your child have support in school? 

How the Mike Bolhuis flamingo project is also supporting vulnerable children in South Africa.

I came across Mike Bolhuis and the Flamingo Project through a friend in South Africa. I’m here for 2 weeks working with volunteers who support children’s charities year-round. When I’m not in South Africa I work behind the scenes, promoting, fund raising and online support. You can read about my last visit in December 2018, supporting a Christmas Charity.

After recent droughts in South Africa Mike took it upon himself to try and rescue hundreds of dehydrated and starving flamingo chicks, which hatched back in February in Kamfersdam, Kimberley.

Photo Credit

These chicks have now been released back into their natural habitat, but Mike was left with 100’s of teddy bears the public had donated for the flamingo chicks to snuggle up to, to keep warm and to play with.

I spoke to Mike this week to thank him for the teddy bears, which are now washed, repaired and waiting to be rehoused to 300 vulnerable children living in poverty or in orphanages in and around Pretoria.

You can read more about Mike’s Flamingo rescue on his face book page.

Flamingoes are one of my favourite birds and I often visit Ras Al Khor bird santuary where I live in Dubai and I went in search of the flamingoes in the Western Cape in July 2015.

I'm, pleased Mike and the volunteers have been successful with their project, just a shame I didn't arrive earlier and I could have volunteered.

One daily Positive - Week 49 A week in South Africa

A long, hot, tiring and emotional week in South Africa, delivering Christmas gifts in the townships and catching up with friends.

The food and drink here is amazing with a bottle of wine costing less than a small glass of wine in the UK and Dubai. A meal less than the price of a coffee. 

Life in South Africa is extreme. I've been staying with friends, who feed me, loan me their cars and braai for me. I've had Starbucks which is considered expensive here compared to the local coffee chains and I've visited children living in extreme poverty whose parents have insisted on feeding me also.

Peter arrived on Thursday and we're spending the weekend in a safari lodge.

*Braai - BBQ

335 Sunday Arrived at Johannesburg Airport at 10am, collected by my friend, went out for lunch and then taken to another friend's for the night.

336 Sunday Up early, car packed and off to Soshanguve, a township in Northern Pretoria for 3 celebration parties, handing out Christmas gifts in orphanages. We came across a family living here, we did what we could, but chucking money at the situation wasn't going to help. The older sister was recovering from a hang over.

337 Monday Having spent the night with another friend, I set off back to Soshanguve for the final celebration, this was a day care centre, the parents pay a very small daily fee to send their children there from birth to age 6 often 10-12 hours as it takes 2 hours by bus to travel into Pretoria or 45 minutes for me by car.

338 Tuesday I packed and delivered cartons of boxes to a couple of other volunteers ready for their celebration days, then headed off to a local mall for a Starbucks and to do some shopping, then visited a friend in the afternoon with her 6 week old baby.

339 Wednesday The day finished with a Braai at a friends and several glasses of wine, however it started with 3 x 30km trips to collect 473 donated Christmas gifts and deliver to stor_age whilst we decide what to do with them. There are many children left to receive but each box has to be checked and contents added, that will have to be the work of others.

340 Thursday I sourced and packed for 11 teens in an orphanage that a friend asked me for and sorted through a pile of 2nd hand donated items to give them also, in the afternoon I went out for coffee. They're load shedding in South Africa, as they've run out of coal and this means the power is switched off for 2-3 hours every day. No traffic lights, no power to the supermarkets. They remain open but I can't help thinking the freezer and fridge contents are suffering. There's also no power to the personal security with housing, leaving you feel slightly vulnerable at home.

Peter arrived in the evening and we Braai'd with our hosts.

341 Friday Peter and I drove round our old haunts then drove up to Hammanskraal. We're staying on a game reserve for a few days until I fly home on Monday night. We've booked a game drive on Sunday morning and ironically we were asked if we wanted to do a township drive into Soshanguve.

342 Saturday Had a leisurely breakfast, read our books, sat outside and chilled out till 2pm before heading off for 30 mins to a friends house for a Christmas Braai and a few drinks. Two of my South African BFF's.

On the blog this week:

Celebrating Christmas in the Townships
My Blogmas Christmas Tree
Reusing and recycling waste in South Africa 

An InLinkz Link-up

Soshanguve Township, South Africa, Christmas gift giving.

We lived in South Africa January 2011 till December 2014, since then I've returned many times to continue supporting a Christmas Charity with collecting and distributing Christmas gifts to children living in poverty in townships in and around Pretoria. There's so much more to just packing a box, it involves work all year round, from visiting facilities in rural townships, to collecting names, uploading information on the website, through to asking for individual donations as well as obtaining bulk donations, collecting, sorting and delivering the gifts to the children often in locations with no phone signal or GPS location.

A friend and I did 3 celebrations on Sunday, 200+ children. 2 facilities were new to us and took some finding, driving off road and round in circles, mindful of our personal safety. We arrived at the facilities to discover they'd enrolled extra children and we had to make magic boxes from our collection of extras in the car boot to ensure every child received a gift.

It's very emotional, it's hot and hard work (temps 35c) no running water, a long drop only to pee in and trust me, you really have to be desperate to use one. 

These are the children's bathrooms.

It's very rewarding though and we get to meet the most amazing and selfless people who support orphans and the most vulnerable children in society, often with no government funding. 

By bringing a child in their care a Christmas Gift we are supporting the supporters, what we do is very little in comparison to their day to day struggles.

For reasons of child protection I am unable to post pictures of the children.

Car loaded and off. Only in South Africa can packets of sanitary pads cause much excitement for young girls.

This is the home for one young boy. He lives with his sister who has a small baby and their disabled grandmother in one room, this is their kitchen where they cook on a make shift fire.

One fo the care providers receiving a box on behalf of a child. Of the 7000+ boxes collected when I was here in September/October, I was surprised to discover 2 boxes I'd personally packed from friends in the UK.

Supporting Children living in poverty in South Africa

I spent 4 years living in South Africa and have been back many times to visit the charities I worked 
with when we lived there.

There are numerous charities in South Africa supporting children living in poverty in many different ways.

The Viva Foundation who supply affordable education and support the local community with a 
variety of projects. Including camping in a township, taking part in an arts project.

Dignity Dreams providing women with washable and reusable sanitary products. I reviewed them.

Santa Shoebox Project collect and distribute 110,000 Christmas gifts throughout the country each 
year. My Santa Shoebox journey.

Kungwini Welfare Organisation provide residential care for adults and children with learning 
difficulties, as well as providing education in their local community. I first started making scarves 
with them in 2014 raising funds for supplies for the workshop

I'm back in South Africa in September 2018. I've funded my own trip and will be staying with friends as I've done previously, since we relocated to Dubai.

What I'll be doing as well as visiting and supporting Kungwini and Santa Shoebox is to visit the 
children in the townships that I've met through these organisations over the years and bring a little  
extra happiness into their lives.

This could be through painting a classroom, holding a birthday party, donating toiletries and or 
educational supplies and I'd like you to help me succeed by donating £5 in exchange for a handmade scarf. That's it, that's all you have to do, just visit my PayPal account and donate.

In exchange for your £5, I'll select a scarf at random that I've made and post it to you. I'll tweet out a 
thank you, post the total amount raised, provide invoices and post photos online (with permission) of 
the children who have received your donation. Every penny raised will be spent directly on children 
living in poverty.

Visit my Paypal account, donate and then message me with your address on:

Twitter Facebook Instagram

Why I don't believe in luck

Many people think I'm lucky to be living in Dubai, not working, where the sun shines and the financial freedom to support our children and to travel freely to visit them when I choose.

I don't think I'm lucky at all. I think this comes down to my husband having worked hard throughout school, obtaining a degree and choosing his career path that led him down the road of a working life abroad.

I've been told I'm lucky to have met and married my husband, but I don't think luck paid a part there at all, it devalues our relationship and says little about me really.

Saying my husband is lucky to have his job, undermines his hard work and his life choices. But then of course he did benefit from a free University education, but so did everyone else of his generation, including me, but I didn't take that route. I opted to go down that road with a student loan in 2005.

My kids are lucky though, they benefit from our hard work, but that luck is only the starting point, they have to make the next move, take that luck and continue to work hard, choose their own life paths and make their own choices.

My kids are not lucky because they have parents who can financially support them with their life choices, because we don't. We may have put our youngest through boarding school, but that didn't automatically buy him an education, he still had to physically and mentally put the work in. It hasn't opened doors into the world of work, he still has to go through the same channels as everyone else, application forms, interviews and rejections. He went to boarding school because his educational needs weren't supported in South Africa where we chose to live, it was a huge emotional and financial sacrifice to make that decision, but we weren't lucky we could afford that choice, we actually had limited choices.

Is he lucky because he can live in our 1 bed flat we bought while he waits to find a job? No. We only bought the flat because we needed somewhere to stay when we visited family in the UK, where I spend half my year, due to my husband working abroad. Our other children got to stay living at home in a family environment, got to come home from school/college each day to their family and a cooked meal. They didn't have to live on their own. Most of our friends with 18+ year olds either still have their kids living at home while they look for work or save for their future or are at University and can pop home on weekends. Ours can't, he's 3000 miles away.

I've been genuinely lucky twice in my life, where it hasn't cost me money or much effort. On both occasions involving free trips to sporting events. Filling in my personal details on competition forms and posting them off in time and relying on the 'luck of the draw'. I went to the Olympic games in Barcelona in 1992 and the Rugby 7's in Hong Kong in 2017.

I've never been upgraded on a flight, but I've had empty seats allowing me to stretch out and sleep on a long haul flight. I've managed to bag the last parking space right by the door when I've been running late for an event and I sat online once for several hours to get Peter tickets for the Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 arena in 2007, but that cost me £300.

My Sunday Photo Week 121 B is for Boarding School

I've tried several times to write how I feel about taking my son back to boarding school this afternoon for his last ever term and my last term as a school mum, but I'm struggling to put how I feel in words, so I'll just leave you with this photo of his school instead.

How practical is practical parenting advice?

How practical is practical parenting advice?

I stopped looking for help and guidance with my children a long time before the internet became the ‘go to’ place to go, in fact I didn’t own a mobile phone or have an email address until after my last son was born and that was in 1999, as he was the 3^rd boy I’d gone past the stage of needing advice on changing nappies, sleeping arrangements and weaning, However when we did start to have issues, I didn’t turn to friends, family or the internet, I went straight to the professionals and followed their guidance and help.

It’s what led me to my choice of career, although now redundant as I'm currently a ‘lady who lunches’ or in other words an expat, it became my job to be the person who advised and issued the guidelines on how to parent, where to go to to get support, help and advice and what was normal childhood within any and every situation. I didn’t make it my mission to learn everything and tell you it all, I made it my job to help you implement the latest guidance and advice into your day to day life. I also trained NVQ 3 students in Childcare and Education in a variety of settings and supported work experience students. As well as 2 years as a child welfare officer training and supporting volunteers, coaches and others involved in grassroots football, and working with multi agencies. 

I can very easily sit here and tell you how to manage any situation either from a personal, work or friends experience or I can google search something straight away, tell you what and how to do it, but leave you feeling inadequate because the solution doesn’t fit your family needs.

It's all well and good advising a parent on how to deal with a problem child, a child with disabilities, a child who is being bullied, or is the bully. A child who is a picky eater or just doesn't sleep or wets the bed, or is drinking alcohol or taking drugs, child who is excelling in school but just not being stretched enough or a child that is slow to read or write or just can't grasp a maths concept, but it's not always practical to implement.

I've pretty much either dealt with a lot of these things with my own family or I've been on training courses or worked in a particular area of expertise.

I appreciate every family environment is different and that some of the advice may not be relevant or work for you. Finances may be an issue, you could be a single parent, you could be in an abusive relationship, you could have 1 child or 10. You have food shopping, washing, ironing and cleaning to do, school runs in all weathers in a car or on foot, a partner who works irregular hours, you could be a stay at home parent or part time or full time working parent or parents.

My last child turns 18 in April, all 5 have survived into adulthood and beyond. I hope by sharing experiences I've had as a mother that I can help you by guiding you in the right direction, offering tips on what worked for us, how issues were resolved and that in the long run, everything did work out ok.

Where do you turn for support and advice?

My Sunday Photo - Week 115. F is for future.

A big part of who I am is what I do. Although it sounds dramatic my identity was taken from me the day we became expats, living in a country where I wasn't permitted to work. This wasn't something I was prepared for and we trusted the relocation company when they said that once we'd settled the children into school, found a house and our container arrived, that they would then assist with the job market. They hadn't checked the law on foreigners working other than organising the inter company transfer for Peter. I did eventually find volunteer work and as satisfying as it was, there was an assumption that I baked cakes and fund raised at the local golf club, or read to a primary school class once a week, when I said I volunteered in Education for charity.

So on moving to Dubai, just after 2 years ago, my focus after settling into our new home was to find work. It took 10 months before I started teaching in FS. In hindsight, I took the first (and only) job offered to me and as much as I loved the job, the environment wasn't for me, so I left 3 months ago.

My visa for the past 6 years has read 'housewife' I'm not even a SAHM, since the kids have left home, I'm just a SAH and I'm bored, lonely and at 45, life is now passing me by.

We're staying in Dubai another 2-3 years, at 60 this year, Peter is looking forward to retirement in a couple of years time and despite having our finances sorted, I will need to work as we want to continue living this life style of travel and having nice things, so the reality is I need to find a job that will enhance my opportunities when we return to the UK.

I've applied for 2 positions. 1 in Dubai and 1 in the UK. The Dubai job is teaching life skills to 15-18 year old in several school across the UAE. The UK job is with The Football Association and in Child Welfare. The UK job is probably out of my area of expertise these days, as things in Child Welfare have moved on so quickly. It will throw up huge problems as I will need to live in London and Peter will remain in Dubai.

The job in Dubai has offered me an interview, the beginning of May. I need the time to get my disclosure processed from the Disclosure and Barring Service, a police check for my time in both Dubai and South Africa and a variety of other documents that need collating. I also need to do a first aid course.

Both jobs leave me with several dilemmas:

I really want The FA job in London, but although I'd be closer to my family, the kids and be able to see them on weekends, I'd be using my 4 weeks annual leave for long weekends in Dubai to see Peter and he'd have to use his to make trips to see me. My salary would be spent on my cost of living and flights, but it may encourage Peter to make an earlier return to the UK as we could rent out both our UK properties and live off the rent as well as my salary.

If I take the job in Dubai, I'd earn far more money than I could ever dream of in the UK, although if I hadn't left the UK, I'm fairly positive my career would've developed to earning around the same amount now, but then Peter wouldn't have earn such a high salary staying in the UK as he does from working abroad. And I'd be back in a similar situation as to when I was working as a teacher here, bound by the school holidays, and restricted visits to see the family and adult kids in the UK.

At the end of the day, attending interviews won't do me any harm, I can always turn the job down, money isn't really a factor while we're living here, especially now we are free of boarding school fees.

But I do need to be doing something other than travelling back and forth to the UK, the months in-between drive me mad, I do the same things over and over and it's boring, my brain is turning to mush, although I do several study courses online to keep up to date with things. I'm 46 in a couple of months and in 2-3 years I'll be approaching 50, I'm not sure after 8-9 years of doing nothing I'll actually be that employable to do a job, have a career that I can excel in.

So watch this space, who knows I might not got offered either job and I'll be no worse off than I am now.

Managing emotions when your chid is in care.

Disclaimer: Although I make references to 'our daughter' I am her step mother and have been since I met her Father in 1999. I consider her and her brother, referred to children 1 & 2 of 5, as my family. In the same way my husband considers children 3, 4 & 5 as part of his. The children refer to us as their parents and their siblings as just that. The children were 1, 5, 7, 10 & 11 years of age when we blended our 2 families.

In February 2016 I wrote a blog post about our adult daughter being in care and the self imposed guilt we feel about living thousands of miles away, you can read the post here. It was featured on Mumsnet Blog of the day and there were some lovely comments from people in similar situations on both the blog post and Mumsnet forums. In October Mumsnet contacted me to write a follow on piece for their forum, but due to disability and special needs being fiercely debateD in several forums after the BBC documentary featuring Sally Phillips, it was shelved and I forgot all about it.

I decided to post the piece I wrote for Mumsnet after receiving an email in February a year on from the original post about implementing a new assessment for our daughter, an assessment we were not asked to take part in by her care home and there are many errors in the assessment that are relevant to the original post that need addressing. Most of the content isn't relevant to our daughters day to day care, it's the historical information that is incorrect, such as her father only visiting once a year, us moving to Dubai after she went into care and no mention of the fact that from 2000 -2011 the year she went into care and the year we left the UK, that she stayed at the family home with us and her siblings almost every weekend.

It is important to us that this is corrected. It happens every time there are new management, social workers, owners of her care home and we sent similar emails and correspondence in 2013 and 2014 when this happened last. Surely her personal information should remain the same, just with an update on the previous year.

For the past 16 years, our daughter has been in care. She is now 28.

She lives with another disabled young woman and requires 24/7 care - the same kind you need to give a baby or toddler.

She is profoundly disabled and wears nappies. She can feed herself with a spoon if the food is chopped up, and can drink unaided out of a sippy cup. She has no form of communication and doesn't make eye contact, so if she is unwell, uncomfortable or in pain, we must use a process of elimination to work out what is wrong. She may laugh hysterically, cry or stay quiet. There is no pattern to her behavior.

My husband and I now live in Dubai. Putting a child into care was hard; moving thousands of miles away was even harder. People sometimes suggest that by moving abroad we no longer care about her, but that isn’t the case at all.

Our daughter has no concept that we are so far away. Her life carries on without a second thought for us - she doesn’t realise that she only actually sees us for a few weeks every year. She recognises us only by our routines with her when we visit. Our photos are on her wall, but we don't believe she knows what she is looking at.

Prior to leaving the UK in 2011, we had her home every weekend and went to see her once a week. We felt welcomed visiting her and our other children would play with her in the garden as if they were in their own home.

However, we had to manage these visits carefully - seeing other friends and family with her was difficult, as she has a tendency to grab hair and clothes and has no awareness of personal space or danger. She’s active and needs space to roam about, but she walks unsteadily and falls easily.

Since moving abroad, we try to keep in contact by sending post and emails, but we rarely receive a reply from the people caring for her. There is a constant turnover of staff, and there is little time for them to be briefed on her history and family background. Although we can’t fault the care she receives, we often feel our concerns and efforts are dismissed - it seems her carers assume we have abandoned her.

This can be difficult to cope with. When I last called to wish our daughter a happy birthday, the person who answered had no interest in talking to me, although I tried to find out details about how she was. I used to work in care and I know the kind of assumptions that are made about families who don’t visit regularly; it’s difficult knowing that these are being made about you, and being powerless to stop it. We feel guilty about the situation, but we also know it’s best for our family.

We’ve had to make these kinds of difficult choices throughout our daughter’s life. We also have four sons, and when they were younger we made the decision to go on holiday without her. Family days out always took an enormous amount of organisation; the boys were often restricted by their sister’s needs. In the end, we decided that their need for individual time and attention outweighed the guilt we felt at leaving our daughter behind.

After 16 years of navigating the care system, we no longer have the desire or energy to constantly justify our relationship with our daughter. We also know that as time passes and we age, we will be able to do less for her: we’re already finding it harder to get her in and out of the car and change her nappy. We have a lovely time taking her out and spending time with her when we visit, but we wouldn’t be able to cope with her day-to-day care. While we’ll always feel guilty that we’re not with her on a daily basis, we’ll always feel relief when we drop her back at her home at the end of our visit. 

We need our daughters record to be accurate and reflect our relationship with her and her extended family. There have already been occasions where I've turned up to visit and I've had to justify my relationship with her as the staff haven't met me before and aren't aware of her relationship with me.

Mummy Times Two