Mindsets

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be invited to a meeting at my sons school about mindsets.
It was really quite interesting and thought provoking.

Professor Dweck has done research in the area and she says"In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it."

Below is an image explaining the difference.

My daughter has a growth mindset but I can see my son has a fixed mindset in many areas so we'll need to do some work with him so he can fulfil his potential.

Keeping it clean vs keeping it real!

I'm not a one for a clean and sparkling home, living in an old beamed cottage in village, having a mud loving dog and 2 children and a husband who all play football kind of sees to that.

Don't get me wrong, theres nothing nicer than freshly laundered sheets and line hung washing - so yes I always make the time for that. When I look round my house I don't see a dreadful mess but nor do I see a palace - its a lived in family home, simple as that.

Lately however I have been finding it slipping away from me a bit, life has just been so busy and we have had building work going on so I kind of havent bothered. I venture into the bathroom knowing I am going to find it messy and frankly not even up to my standards and heaven forbid you should open a cupboard anywhere.

I've kind of enjoyed the extra time to myself though, have read a novel which I haven't done in ages - picked up my crocheting again and watched the odd film with OH too. Last week I sat in the garden under the apple tree with my book and the dog at my feet and realised I couldnt remember the last time I had done that and how good it felt to have that little time of peacefulness.

The end of the building work is however now in site, im faced with a mountain of dust and dirt and spiders webs everywhere, shall I make a plan of action? tackle a bit each day? spend a day getting it spik and span? probably! (although I have decided the whole family can help this time) - but for now i'm planning to pick up my book and venture back into the garden.....

Pro's and cons of working from home ...

I don't have a high flying executive career but working from home gives me the flexibilty to be their when my children get up, take them to school and pick them up afterwards. It gives me the chance to go to their school plays and to their sports days and have their friends round after school. I wouldn't trade this for the world.

What working from home doesnt give me is that face to face contact you get in a environment working directly with people although I have to say my firm is brilliant with skype and our own work forum as well as get togethers to get to know each other! sometimes I do miss real people though and I am conscious that with only one year left at primary school I'll soon lose the interactions at the school gate too however I am pretty happy in my own company to be honest!

It gets me wondering, how do other homeworkers combat this? does it bother them or are they happy in their own company?

Television

Right now im feeling grumpy about TV, ok I know I do tend to get grumpy about a lot of things but now its TV.

We are in the unfortunate position of not being able to get Sky - financially we could stretch to it but physically the Sky installer said NO too many trees!

This means we have resorted to standard TV for the last couple of years. I'm finding more often than not though that there is very little I want to watch and if I do want to watch something I tend to use catch up TV.

We also have Now.tv and Netflix but will be cancelling one / both as we have watched pretty much everything we want to on there now and they seem to be adding very few films and series to it each week to the point we arent meriting the cost.

I'm hoping theres some great winter programming round the corner to entetain us on those gloomy days!

Watching the pennies

It seems to me that so many people are "watching the pennies" these days but so many have different ideas of what it means to them - for some it is still buying the things they want to have but shopping around for the best deal, for others it is finding ways to stretch the budget further and for far too many people its trying to find a way to feed the family with what little you have.

Here in the Smith household we are no different to everyone else, we have certainly been feeling the pinch and with Winter and expensive heating costs around the corner I'm feeling the need to overhaul the finances once again.

Some of the things we already do are:

Use Quidco.com - it's a great way of getting cashback for things your already going to buy.
Mend rather than purchase new where possible.
Shop from the cupboards first and then do a shopping list for what we actually need.
Bake most of our treats
Cook most meals from scratch (we do have a bit of a takeaway fetish ad this is on our to address list!)
Shop in Aldi at least a couple of times a month, we have found we get a lot more for our money but we do need to supplement from the other supermarket too.
Go to car-boot sales (and sell our old stuff at them or on ebay) Kids toys and books can be a great find at car boot sales.
Shop for the cheapest Electricity supplier and change.
Use boilerjuice.co.uk to shop around for the cheapest heating oil.
Use blankets and jumpers in the winter to cut the cost of oil down.
Have a fire on weekends and evenings we are at home.
Purchase some of our clothes from charity shops
Have a camping holiday and cheap / free days out with the family.

We are however going to need to look at some of our non-essential spending and cut that down even further which I'll update you on as we go.

Does feeling the pinch make me cross? well er yes, a little! both my husband and I work hard at full time jobs and yet we cannot even afford a new(er) car, we cannot afford a holiday either abroad or in a carvan / cottage, I cannot learn to drive. However I know of people far less fortunate than us and I thank goodness that we can have hot healthy meals on the table, the children are clothed and we can have some treats like the odd takeaway and day out and buy newspapers and watch Now TV.

Watching the pennies is making us appreciate completely different things in our life, the gorgeous sunny days where we can go for a walk as a family, the smell of biscuits that my 12 year old daughter has baked and sitting cosily and warm in front of a roaring fire. All things I doubt I would have paid any attention to a few years ago. Would I change it? well yes there are things I'd really like to find the money for such as the odd nice holiday and driving lessons but the living simpler and cutting back on material things in our lives - no I wouldn't change it for the world!

Back to school blues

Sometimes it's hard as a parent to watch other peoples children sail back into school without a care in the world when one of your own really doesnt want to go back. I dont mean the usual "Mum do I HAVE to go back to school complaining" My eldest (12) has that down to a tee but I know in reality she is quite excited to be back with her friends and secretly quite enjoys learning.

My youngest (10), now thats a different kettle of fish - He has had a few difficult years at school where he is one of very few boys his age, he's not really fitted into the typical mould for the boys and is instead much more a sensitive soul and has found himself on the outside of the group, excluded from social situations and on some occasions deliberately hurt or humiliated. "Why does no-one like me?" I hear on a regular basis "What's wrong with me" - "My son, there is nothing wrong with you, your kind, gentle and thoughtful and I love you dearly" I tell him but clearly its not enough.

The further into each school term, school year we journey the more he retreats into himself and I watch his self esteem plummet to the ground. I don't drive so we have no other option than to keep him at the school he is at - which to be fair are trying now to support him through this.

This summer has seen him blossom and grow, his smile has returned, he has explored, camped out,read, joined a new football team - making loads of friends in the process and generally had a whale of a time. However about a week ago it dawned on him he was going back to school and I felt that unease in him start to rise, I reassured him "your the oldest year group in the school" and "just be yourself and keep talking to us and the teachers." He has hardly slept all week, getting more and more wound up until yesterday when he had to go back.

I wish I had a happy end to this story, that he came home and everything was great but real life just isn't like that is it? He endured it, he learned in his lessons but he was passed over for house captain and vice captain by the other children re-enforcing his belief that there is something wrong with him. I wish I could take the hurt away, make everything right but I can't. All I can do is look to the adventure with him of secondary school next year where there will be more boys to be friends with and surely another sensitive soul like him too!

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my blog, I often have all sorts of thoughts rambling on in my head so I thought "why not put it out there!" so have created this blog as an outlet for my ramblings.