Author: Oana

Potty training in two days!!

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Okay, it should read one actually because she stayed dry till evening when she needed a poo but daddy was in the toilet and mummy was busy downstairs. She tried to let us know but a long habit of doing it in her pants won over. Anyway… Yes, my toddler is potty trained!! She’s two and four months. Some would say I should have done it sooner, some books advocate toddler led potty training and advise leaving it till the toddler is nearly three. Any mum out there with a bit of sense about herself would tell you that it will happen…when it happens! We have had several unsuccessful attempts before but we never made a big deal of them. I thought she will learn one day and it’s no point making her feel rubbish just because she’s not ready yet. You see, I don’t believe in “one rule suits all” or guilt trips. They are set by people who have nothing better to do with their time: childless nannies, busy body grannies…etc. I believe …

Movie Review: Doubt

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Doubt… We watched the movie last Saturday and it kept us awake into the small hours of the morning. The story line is quite flat, just like bad gossip: a superior nun,who’s also the principal of this Catholic school, suspects a newly appointed priest of inappropriate behaviour towards one of the pupils. She doesn’t have any evidence, only a few incidents brought to her attention by an eager and easily impressed young nun. But she convinces herself and everybody else involved that the priest has wronged the child somehow and makes him leave the school and the parish. The movie is on the other hand brilliant in exploring the human mind and its intricacies: it makes the viewer aware of how easily a “reality” can be created out of suspicion and self-justification.  As, indeed, nothing is explained in the end and the viewer is left battling a sea of endless possibilities and scenarios. Was the reality Sister Aloysius Beauvier constructed veritable or was it all in her head and she  blamed an innocent man? Or …

Teaching on the wrong side of town

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I was teaching today. I am what they call in the States a “supply teacher” or a “substitute teacher” here, in Northern Ireland. I get phone calls in the evening or even early in the morning, mainly from primary schools and go in when a teacher is sick or on a training course. Today it was a secondary school, for a change. A couple of years ago I had the privilege to work with some great kids there, from Thailand, Malaysia, India and China, who needed a bit of practice and encouragement with their English.  Today I wasn’t so privileged and had a battle on my hands with every new class who walked through the door. It wasn’t me they were fighting but the institution I represented, the authority they wanted to usurp from their lives because it doesn’t stand for anything meaningful to them.  They don’t see the point in studying and considering their backgrounds, I don’t blame them, really. For many of them, the sense of twisted peer  recognition coming from mocking everything …