The Cityparents Blog
Since Cityparents was founded in late 2012, we've published a weekly blog sharing the real life experiences and perspectives of individual members balancing work and parenthood.
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Angel's blog: Schools are open– work/life balance in action
My eldest started Reception at school this month and I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry. I had a small wobble when they sent me videos and photos from his nursery graduation, as parents we... Read More
Dolly's blog: Who comes first?
The children come first. Don’t they? Isn’t that just…a fact? I now think not.
Several years ago (with two kids under three, a husband away fighting in Afghan... Read More
Linda's blog: Time to be proactive
When I wrote my last blog it was May and we were literally on our knees. I can’t bear to re-read my brutally honest words. What a difference a few months can make. The chink o... Read More
Jon's Blog : Happily Ever After?
How's your summer been so far? I'm guessing it's not been quite like you anticipated when you planned it earlier this year, or even last year. We were looking forward to a sun... Read More
Kemi's blog: Finding joy in the simple things
When I got the alert about my blog submission this week, I was very unsure about what to write about. Since my last blog in May I have experienced two very big unexpected changes.
Firs... Read More
Katie's blog: Still embracing it!
I wrote my last blog for Cityparents back in April at the start of lockdown. At the time I wrote about how I had decided I would embrace lockdown and how I planned to stick to a routine. Reading that... Read More
Addy's blog: Climb every mountain
I’ve been mulling over what to write in this blog for over a week now. Do you want to hear about where I am in my cancer journey (or my brother and mums)? Do we want more Coronavirus/lockdown s... Read More
Caroline P's blog: Lockdown life
I started lockdown feeling really enthusiastic. I saw it as a challenge, and an opportunity. I would get my work done around the kids’ needs; I’d be invested in their home schooling, and ... Read More
Ally's blog: School’s out - now what?
Has anyone else been filled with terror at the prospect of the school summer holidays? It’s one of those things that I’m nervous about mentioning in polite society – I have vi... Read More
Barbara's blog: Please don’t fill my tent’s smoke hole…
Working at the dining table in an open plan house means I have an uninterrupted view of the garden. There is a squirrel climbing up to the bird table for its daily seed heist and robins have gathered... Read More
Caroline's blog: Being real
This morning we enjoyed some glimmers of normality (and a quiet house) as our second child was welcomed back to his primary school. Lockdown with two parents working from home, two extrovert pri... Read More
Caroline M's blog: Another dimension of my life
For almost 5 years now, I have struggled to reconcile being the mother my daughters deserve, and the daughter my aging parents deserve. Not to mention everything else on my little life's spectrum... Read More
Lucy's blog: The day you didn’t have
I had been jotting down ideas for this blog with lockdown in mind. My husband and I are working from my mother’s house in the land that high-speed broadband forgot where we are locking down to ... Read More
Emma's blog: Homeschooling during COVID-19
Emma Bradley, parent, qualified teacher and founder of blog Emmaand3 , explains how she’s guiding her three children through this tough time at home and shares her top tips for home scho... Read More
Angel's blog: Smelling the Roses
Lockdown has been an experience to remember. As it threw people out of their usual routine, I’ve been able to notice a number of interesting and positive changes. In eight years of living in my... Read More
Dolly's blog: Chorizo was my loo roll
I’ve been learning a thing or two about myself this lockdown. Beginning with the fact that, when initially facing the prospect of Armageddon, my priorities were to stock up on tahini, scen... Read More
Guest blog: Making Memories
Can you look back on this as a scared time to treasure rather than just survive?
Child – “How old are you, Grandpa?”
Grandpa – “I’m 81, dear.”
... Read More
Linda's blog: Are you ok?
My name’s Linda and I feel really anxious. This is a new experience for me and I find it hard to admit. It's also hard to admit that until recently I'd never really understood... Read More
Kemi's blog: Lessons learnt
Remember my first blog for the year where I said I was aiming to relaunch my career in 2020 as I had felt stuck for a while especially since having my kids? Well, that definitely isn’t going to... Read More
Jon's Blog: A Lion Looking at a Stool
I have lots of useless trivia in my head (names of the Bond films in order and who played Bond in each, check), but one anecdote has recently come back to mind. Years ago, I heard that lion tam... Read More
Dan's blog: Learning to Love the Lockdown
Over the last few weeks, all of us have been adjusting to the new reality of working from home, social distancing, and the like. I thank my lucky stars that my boy is not yet of school age, so at lea... Read More
Addy's blog: Somewhere over the rainbow.
Things were starting to go better in 2020, my mum is home and stable, my brother’s chemo was underway and he was doing ok on it, and I had my surgery at the end of February to remove the last o... Read More
Katie's blog: Embracing it
I started writing this blog a few weeks ago and it was originally about the amazing #MotherWorks photography exhibition ( www.wearemoi.net ), created by Fiona Freund. #MotherWorks compares... Read More
Ally's blog: Juggling
When I was invited to join the team of blog writers for Cityparents, I thought I’d be able to write some light hearted observations about the day to day juggling (always juggling) of work and f... Read More
Caroline's blog: The new normal
As I write, the world around us is changing daily, and we’re all navigating a new, very insular and yet much more intense daily life.
Things have been changing so fast. In what feels almos... Read More
Barbara's blog: Food glorious food? Eating and anxiety
How do you ensure an anxious child follows a healthy diet? And what if the anxiety is related to food itself? These are the questions that I have had to ask myself in the past few years, since my son... Read More
Caroline's blog: The Coronavirus pendulum
Like me, I suspect you’ve hitched a ride on the coronavirus pendulum recently – swinging between complacency and obsessive panic, before balancing out somewhere in the region of business ... Read More
Louisa's blog: Home School
“Home-school”: enough to chill the heart of many working parents and, until recently, two words that had rarely entered my mind as potentially one day being relevant to my world.
... Read More
Freddy's blog: Role models
We’re coming up for 5 years of parenthood and 10 years of being a couple. Or can you add the age of the second child to the first and say you’ve been a parent for 6 1/2 years? Then when w... Read More
Lucy's blog: Happy International Women’s Day
“Boys don’t like unicorns mum, they’re for girls.”
“WHAT??!!” I scream internally.
“I see…” I actually say “…and of ... Read More