Have we got a starting Secondary School Support thread?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

I’ve just just asked DD what the sandwich box and bottle are for in the fridge. It turns out she’s made her first packed lunch ready for school. She doesn’t start till next Tuesday

Well done your DH Titsywoo !
Bedtime here is 8.30, 9 at latest except Fridays when a Scouts doesn’t finish until 9 so it’s often nearly 10.

what do you all do for afternoon snack?
dc is home half an hour/hour before the rest of us.
mugshots and potnoodles feature heavily. not the best I know!
will try to make our own next week with lots of veg.

Rumours that we've all just been drinking coke and eating wispas are untrue. 😱 We've only been eating carrot sticks and grapes.

Titsywoo Hope your DH isn't like mine and will just leave you to deal with the fallout from that.

Asked DS what happened to his detention today, well I had to miss it as I got another one at the same time. 😂

Oh no, witchend - that doesn't sound good at all :(

@redsummershoes

Re snacks - my year 7 DS is always starving when he comes home

He has ..

Wraps with a variety of fillings - chicken or ham or halloumi and salad

Toasted cheese bagels with fruit

Fish finger sandwich and crisps

We also have apples, carrots, nuts, cheese sticks, chocolate covered rice cakes, toast

Actually he just eats everything

Sorry Witchend missed your post in a world of my own here. 😎

Hope you manage to get that sorted quickly. DS is getting a bit close to school refusal too though did manage today.

My DS often has toast. Doesn't eat many different things, at the moment when DH goes to takeaway DS always says surprise me but he only eats 2 meals there. 😳 DH did surprise him with a third one and he wouldn't eat it. He eats lots of fruit, ham sandwiches, Pringles for snacks.

Oh witchend, how frustrating! Do you think there is any way the school can make a better impression on your DS now?

DD goes to sleep quite late but she always has tbh. She is tired though! Never seems to sleep in even on the weekends, unfortunately.

Not too much homework for this weekend luckily, so it's going to be a good one!

Whatever everyone claims at school, I very much doubt that they are all allowed to stay up until 11 every night. Bedtime here varies a bit as both my boys have Woodcraft Folk on Tuesday and DS1's group is after DS2's - usually 7.30 until 8.30 but 9 pm last Tuesday, and it's a couple of miles away, with usually a short bus journey and a longer walk, so they aren't both home much before 9.30 normally. On Wednesday DS1 has football and DP and the boys come home after that with a takeaway at about 8.30. Tonight they will go upstairs between 8.30 and 9. DS1 does read for ages in bed, DS2 sometimes reads for a bit but on late bedtime evenings he often just crashes out and is fast asleep really quickly.

To be honest I don't remember having a bedtime from about 8 or 9 and didn't at all by 11, but at the beginning of my third year at middle school (equivalent to Year 7) my mum and stepdad had a 3 year old and a new baby and I suspect I was left to read or do my homework while they dealt with getting my brother and sister into bed.

I think it's normal for kids to be hungry when they get home, and there's some good ideas here for better snacks that they could have. Probably too often they just end up with biscuits and crisps, and apart from being unhealthy I don't think either are that effective at quelling hunger pangs.

Aww, @elkiedee, mine used to do Woodcraft Folk as well, but he left a couple of years ago because we got stuck with a useless grumpy group leader who sucked all the fun out of it. It was a shame because he'd loved it at first. Our battle is partly because he likes a big long-drawn-out performance at bedtime with me reading and then climbing up into his loft-bed with him for a chat and then him reading for half an hour or so, which all takes about an hour and a half, none of which I would mind doing if I hadn't had an hour-long battle to get him upstairs in the first place.

After-school snacks tend to be anything that's not nailed down, on top of whatever he's bought in the Co-op on his way home. He had a banana and a couple of chocolates today and then told me he'd bought a flapjack. He has hollow legs though and does a very physical sport twice a week after school.

mine has lights out 9pm weekends 10.30

up to date with homework so none this weekend

Bedtime here is 9pm during the week. Lights go off then and he's always asleep by 9.15 and he has an alarm set for 7.30am. I won't be changing that anytime soon

Weekends i allow until 10pm ish

Thanks for the sympathy.
Basically he got attacked by a group of boys and because they said roughly the same (blaming him) they decided he must be lying. So questioned him several times and because he added when they asked about specific bits apparently "confirmed" he was lying.
This despite saying from the start one of them assaulted him first.

Oh witch poor ds

How infuriating Witch.
Titsy I've got a year 7 eager beaver and an older slow coach too. Luckily they walk so just leave at different times. I wonder if the school will go along with your dh's request.

DD has done surprisingly well in religious studies and ok in everything else. So my nerves are less frayed than last week. But where oh where are all the black socks?

In our house the sofa eats lots of socks but only boy socks. Tend to get industrial quantities of socks as DS gets holes in his all the time, don't know what he does with them.

How many activities / meeting with friends do your kids do after school / at weekends and for how long per week. DD is ungrounded from Tuesday and asking for Army Cadets 7-9pm on Thursday locally, gymnastics on Fridays 3 hours incl 1 hour travel and paid for until Dec Dh takes her there and back and youth club on Tuesdays which again is 7 to 9 locally on a school night. She said she would just come home on Mon and Wed but know there will be nagging for gym for an hour or so after school and then there are parties and meet ups at weekend. Want to give her a weekly limit of number of nights and hours but may need to also veto one by one. I think three late ones in the week is too much. She's saying she will give up gymnastics but she begged for that and we have paid until December. Army cadets maybe OK, that is only £15 one off payment. Not at all sure about youth club. Saying no to hanging around. Gym after school I quite like and that's £1 a time. DH isn't much help. Not much homework but ramps up in y9 but would rediscuss for year 9.

dc does a sport once a week 6-8.
plus after school clubs rugby and cross country 3-5 once a week each.

hmm sandwich toaster. might did dh's old one out from the back of the cupboard...

oh and music lessons on saturdays.

I've caught up with the thread. Witchend your poor DS .

DD2 is killing me slowly with homework. She doesn't see the point of it, and can't see it from the teacher's perspective. She has a 5 part art homework that starts with researching an artist and his work, saying what you like about it, etc. DD says "What if I don't like any of it and find the artist completely boring?" I've explained to her that the point of the exercise is to find out about the artist, why other people think he's important, what it is about his work that changed art when he did it, why he painted the things he did, what mediums he used and why, what effect they had, etc., but she just says "Well it all just looks boring to me!"

I can't do her homework for her. At the same time, she seems to be having a complete mind-block on this, because she can't understand how she can look for interesting facts when it seems so boring to her. This is only part 1 of a 5 part homework.

Give me strength!!!

I would say 2 x weeknight max and possibly one at weekends is reasonable penguin . We just do riding and scouts but scouts sometimes has weekend activities. You mention money but it’s also about how much time it takes and impacts on others with lifts etc.

DD has 1 weeknight (scouts) and 2 weekend (ballet/recorder group)
which works out ok. She also does stuff at school lunchtimes and drama after school Tuesday. DD never switches off though and behaves much worse when bored.

Mine goes fencing twice a week from 6 to 7.30 and is back by about 8.15. His friend from the next street turns up randomly several times a week, calling for him to play out on their bikes, which I don't mind because he's an only child and it gets him off Fortnite! He has to be in by 7.30 though, and that will get earlier as the evenings draw in.

DD2 is killing me slowly with homework. She doesn't see the point of it, and can't see it from the teacher's perspective
I can't see the point a good deal of the time. I suspect sometimes the teacher's perspective is simply "oh no I have to set something."

Ds has finally managed to complete his homework for the week. Lots and lots of tears and that he couldn't manage it, and how he didn't understand it. Took a lot of patience and calm from me.
Until the incident on Tuesday he was doing it as soon as he got home with no fuss at all. Now we're back to square one, just how he was at primary. Woopee.

I just hope that they understand how dreadfully this has effected him. It's also been dreadful timing as a friend of mine (that he knows well) had a stroke 10 days ago, and we now know won't recover. I'm port of contact for a lot of people and so I'm having a lot of emotional phone conversations and emails etc as people ask what's happening.
I can't really separate my feeling about both, and I think I'm perhaps focusing more on ds' situation because I feel I can maybe do something there, whereas I can't do anything about the other.

I am thinking of self-identifying as a brown bear and eating a lot then hibernating all winter. I'm sure work can't object to self identification under some sort of discriminatory act can they?