Info about Parenting
6 Motherhood Tips - Avoiding Embarrassment at School
The role of the parent at school is to look normal. This can be achieved as follows:
• Choosing the right one.
This will be one whose idea of a good education coincides with your own, otherwise you will always be down there complaining and your child won't see any reason to go. Sending your child to the school you went to only works if you are remembered fondly as a good and able student. Do not delude yourself or have fonder memories than is helpful.
• Behaving sensibly at parent/teacher interviews.
The object of these is to persuade the teachers that your child is a genius and their job is simply to unlock the door. Do not take your husband if, like mine, he spends the allotted five minutes reminiscing about his own school days and getting the teacher's name wrong.
• Not wearing funny clothes
You will recall two incidents involving me and a very short skirt and me with pink and purple hair. The first caused one of you to rush at me and wrap my coat tightly about me, all the while yelling, 'Every other mother is wearing floral to the knee,' The second caused another of you to walk past me in the playground as if I was somebody else's mother and to burst into tears when 1 ran after you. What constitutes funny will depend on your child and the school but know that children, even yourselves, are notoriously conservative when it comes to mothers and you must dress like every other one, even if this means shoving on an Alice band.
• Never arriving at school drunk.
The smell of wine is bad on a mother's breath and you will almost certainly say something you will regret.
• Not overreacting.
This has been a failing of mine. Whenever a child or teacher has done anything to cause you offence, instead of shrugging it off as one of life's challenges, I have gone bananas and dwelt on the slight for many days, plotting revenge and railing about the aggressor's unhinged prejudice. I don't think this has been altogether helpful, on reflection.
• Don't go on about homework.
Your child will either do it or she won't. You doing it will be a dreadful embarrassment because you won't have been at the lesson where the teacher said under no circumstances refer to the caterpillar when a caterpillar is all you can draw and you have done an excellent one. Failure to do homework is the child's look-out and she will soon become conniving and scheming, or a swat, or somewhere in between. It will be her responsibility and saying so is excellent parenting as well as easier all round.