National Trust’s work, land and properties

The National Trust (NT) is Europe’s largest conservation charity whose ethos is to protect and care for places so that people and nature can thrive. The charity is responsible for the care of over 780 miles of coastline, more than 250,000 hectares of land, in excess of 500 historic houses, castles, parks and gardens, and almost a million works of art spanning the length and breadth of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (there is a separate and independent National Trust for Scotland). A National Trust membership provides access to all of these treasures.

Exploring your local area and beyond

As soon as we became members, we discovered just how many interesting places there are to explore in our local area. Many of the venues also have great natural play areas. Over the years, it has really helped with planning easy days out. As we are members these days are free as our entry and parking are both covered. Often we head to some of our favourite places such as Claremont, Polesden Lacey, Morden Hall Park or Box Hill. We regularly head further afield, and when we visit friends and family in different parts of the country we explore National Trust venues near them.

The National Trust was a godsend during lockdown. Whilst houses and cafes were shut, the NT provided free local access to parks, gardens, countryside and other outdoor sites for everyone.  

The benefits of National Trust membership

• Free entry to more than 500 historic houses, castles, parks and gardens
• Free parking at most National Trust car parks
• National Trust Handbook, which provides lots of information about all the places the NT looks after
• You receive the National Trust Magazine three times a year, which has loads of inspiration for family days out
• You’ll make your money back really quickly

The National Trust always has extra activities at Christmas, Easter, half-term and during the summer holidays. These range from outdoor family trails and nature-inspired activities to indoor arts and crafts, so there’s something for all weathers. There’s also the ongoing 50 things to do before you’re 11 3/4. Whilst these activities aren’t restricted to members, as a member you hear about what’s happening first. Similarly, the Trust holds lots of events throughout the year.

The cost of National Trust membership

I find the National Trust membership really good value. To put the following costs into perspective, Attingham Park, Cliveden and Dunham Massey – the Trust’s three most visited venues in the 2021–2022 season – cost £37.50, £42.50 and £36.25 respectively for a family ticket for a one time visit.

Family National Trust membership

A membership for a family of two adults (aged 18+) living at the same address and their children or grandchildren (17 or under) costs £146.40 a year or £12.20 a month.

A membership for one adult and their children or grandchildren is £91.20 a year or £7.60 a month.

Joint or Individual National Trust membership

Children under five are free so in this case, you only need to get a joint or single membership; a joint being £139.20 a year (£11.60 a month) and an individual £84.00 a year (£7.00 a month).

You’re not penalised for paying monthly, so this is a great option for spreading the cost.

Further membership details can be found here: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/membership

Currently, if you pay for a new joint, family, individual or young person membership by annual Direct Debit online you get a £15 National Trust gift card. This can be spent in any National Trust shop or café.

There’s also the option to buy membership as a gift. This would make an excellent Christmas present for someone. You could even put it on your own Christmas list (if you’ve been good!).

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For more details about the National Trust go to: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/

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Covid Christmas

In 2020 we had a far more quiet Christmas than usual due to restrictions. It was just my dad, who was in our bubble, that came over. My gregarious dad is like having three people all at once so it still felt quite lively, but even he couldn’t come over this time.

It would be the first time we’d have Christmas just us five. The Boxing Day plans, which should have seen my brother and his girlfriend, my mother-in-law and brother-in-laws all coming over had to be cancelled. I won’t lie, it was hugely disappointing.

The kids took the news better than us. They were buoyed, no doubt, by the prospect of presents. They were also happy that I’d taken off the days running up to Christmas Day. Proof yet again of their resilience and positivity.

Thankfully neither had symptoms beyond a mild cough/cold; and that’s the main thing I had to bear in mind to help quell my disappointment. My husband and I felt rather deflated, especially Matt who loves cooking for people. We had all manner of culinary treats stacked up in the fridge, freezer and cupboards ready to feed a lot more than five people over the two days.

Getting busy in the kitchen (just for us)

In the run up to Christmas Day, we made some of the kids’ favourite nibbles of Pizzette and created our first ever gingerbread house (thanks Lidl). We even attempted our first ever ‘Cheat’s’ churros Nutella Christmas tree, which was fun, pretty simple to make and very, very tasty.

Games and puzzle

Isolation meant that the annual Christmas puzzle challenge was completed far quicker than usual. We played even more games than normal. The kids have stayed up really late pretty much every day of the holidays, which has meant we’ve watched loads of films.

Me time

What was meant to be a family pre-Christmas day out, which included the annual tradition of getting our Christmas cheese from La Fromagerie, meeting my uncle, and having a general mooch about London was cancelled. I ended up going to get the cheese on my own. After being in isolation for 10 days I decided to make the most of it and took myself out for lunch. It was surprisingly nice and I enjoyed it.

I was able to get some last minute stocking fillers and do other Christmas bits and bobs super efficiently. However, I felt huge remorse whenever I saw something Christmassy that I wanted the kids to see too. This dissipated when I was greeted with the below scene on my return. They’d spent several happy hours on the Nintendo Switch with dad!

Christmas Eve

Cleaning the house (for Santa?) was followed by more games and a fire outside in the evening where we had some nibbles by candlelight. Then it was linguine alle vongole (linguine pasta with clams) as part of my nod to the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes.

Later the girls opened their Christmas Eve box, which included treats we could tuck into whilst we watched more films and Christmas TV! It also included a few little pampering items, cosy socks, BrainBox game and ‘Christmas dresses’ for them all to wear the next day. In the evening Matt and I treated ourselves.

Meals on wheels

My dad gets our annual Italian Christmas cake. He brought it over and we cut it in half as he was now going to spend Christmas Day with my brother.

In return, Matt provided pre-prepped beef Wellington, dauphinoise potatoes, and lobsters that he’d cooked that day. Alongside this he also provided some very good wine! It was nice to know that we’d still be a part of their day even though we weren’t going to be together. Matt was happy that he had cooked for people in addition to us five.

Christmas Day

The morning started off as usual with stockings opened in our room. We had a lovely breakfast and then began opening the main presents.

Lunch was fabulous as always. We took time to savour it and the girls remained sat down for over two hours. We interspersed with crackers with their silly jokes and games.

After lunch we took proper time out to play with presents and play more games and watch more films! We extended this into Boxing Day. Though we missed having guests, we filled the day with lots of fun and laughter. We also FaceTimed relatives Christmas was saved!

The post Covid Christmas – Festivities in Isolation appeared first on The Parent Social.

Their increasing self-sufficiency is great in many regards. However, instead of seeing this as an opportunity to focus more on my career, I’m actually feeling the opposite. I now want to spend more time doing things with them as it seems like they’re starting to need me less.

Work is busier than it used to be and it’s bothering me. I miss not being able to take them here, there and everywhere during half terms, and fear that soon my eldest will be too old to want to come out with her younger sisters and me anyway.

I’m lamenting all those times I’ve been with them, but not properly because I was checking an email on my phone or mentally composing one.

Out of balance

I feel work is taking over and I’ve lost some of my family focus. I’ve dropped the ball on a couple of things lately. For instance, thinking the twins were on school dinners one particular day. They weren’t and I sent them in without a packed lunch. My husband said it was an easy thing to do (they chop and change with their lunch plans) and it was the first time it had ever happened. Precisely, I thought, I’d never let that happen before and now I had.

My mind is always darting from one thing to another and I seem to be constantly cramming everything in.

Crossroads

I’m at a real crossroads.

I have huge imposter syndrome, but in this case it’s actually justified. After falling into PR, I feel I’ve bobbed along without ever having a real aptitude. I wake up with work on my mind, it dominates my thoughts in the evening and I’m working longer hours; that naturally impacts how I am as a parent.

I really enjoy meal planning, shopping for ingredients and cooking when I have time. However, during the week it’s much more of a chore than a pleasure as I try to shoehorn it in amongst work. Similarly, I pine for the weekend and when it comes, we do have great family time together, but I spend a lot of time catching up on the stuff I didn’t get done in the week.

Working – what next?

I really feel like I want to climb off for a bit and take the time to enjoy my family more. If I did stop working, would I then end up with too much time on my hands whilst the children are at school? Could I ever go back to work if I did ‘take a break’? Would I really miss making a significant contribution to the family finances? Could I explore other interests? Yes, no, maybe.

What next? Truth is, I really don’t know. I do know that I need to change something.

The post Working and parenting regrets appeared first on The Parent Social.

When it was full lockdown we adhered to the laws. Friends and family were completely off limits, I only went out of the house (solo) for essential food shopping and we stayed local for our exercise once that was permitted. When we returned from holiday this summer we quarantined for 14 days. That was VERY tough as we couldn’t leave the house at all. Period. We managed it though.

Rule of six when you’re a five

It has been fantastic seeing friends and family again after months of isolation. We, like most, haven’t been meeting up in vast numbers. We have continued to socially distance, have been generally sensible about everything and are fastidious about wearing face masks where mandatory.

The rule of six for families of five obviously means you can only socialise with one other person outside of your unit at a time. One grandparent or one friend (but they can’t bring their partner); a child can’t meet a single friend (even from their own class) out of school as a parent coming with them takes the count to seven.

The rule of six seems to fly in the face of other advice

This all seems rather crazy and arbitrary when children are back at school and we’ve all been encouraged to get back out and about again.

• My children are in year group bubbles. My eldest (who’s just started secondary school) is in a bubble of 150!
• We were encouraged to Eat Out to Help Out in August and can currently be inside a pub or restaurant with lots and lots of perfect strangers. By the way, many places are continuing the scheme independently through September. Details here
• We’ve been told it is safe to return to the office and we should go back if we can
• Ditto public transport. It’s fine to be cocooned with lots of random people. Ubers are fine too
• Hunting and shooting are exempt from the rule of six
• Recreational team sports are back on the agenda (props to my daughter’s netball club for fantastic organisation, sanitisation and implementation of safety measures)

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Sadly, I think COVID-19 is going to be around for a long time yet. We need to strike a balance between safety and containment, and getting back to some sort of normality for the sake of the nation’s mental health. I believe we have to learn to live alongside this disease and to do this need to employ common sense, not take unnecessary risks, ensure the most vulnerable are shielded and take sensible precautions. The rule of six seems rather a blunt, incongruous ‘solution’ to a very complex problem.

And let’s not even think about the ramifications for Christmas

You might also like:

Eating out post-relaxation of lockdown rules

Lockdown letter – a reminisce about the last three months

Easter holiday on lockdown

Lockdown shopping list

The post Rule of Six and a Family of Five appeared first on The Parent Social.

I immediately nudged my husband and asked him to talk to the kids about it as I knew they’d want to be involved and be disappointed if they missed the boat.

The mental load

My initial thought was that organising my own Mother’s Day present was the perfect example of the unequal distribution of the mental load (I work too by the way). Would the reverse happen for Father’s Day; would my husband Matt give me the heads up to make sure that I was on the case? Of course not. Matt* doesn’t even get the school emails. I did all the paperwork for the children’s’ schools when they started, which makes me the primary contact.

Aside from receiving all the memos, I make sure they have the kit they need for whatever club they’re doing, I know when all the inset days are, when random ‘team points’ mufti day is, when they need to take in the charitable donations, what day to order lunches for the week ahead, the what and when of homework, the extracurricular activities, which need paying for, World Book Day, and so on and so on…  

* This is in no way a dig at him   

However, there is another issue about the Mother’s Day, school-organised present…  

Pressure and being left out  

As much as a Mother’s Day gift organised via the PTA sounds full of good intentions, it can be a bit of a minefield. It can put unnecessary extra pressure on working parents (it’s another thing to remember/organise/fail at), it can put extra financial pressure on parents, because of course there’s a price tag attached; also there’s the issue for single parents or for children that might not find it easy to deliver what’s required or perhaps even those who don’t have a fantastic relationship with their children.

Mother’s Day opt out

On a slight aside, I’ve already received a number of Mother’s Day ‘opt-out’ emails. This basically means you can opt out from receiving any promotional content surrounding this particular calendar event. Mother’s Day, and reminders of the day, can be difficult for lots of people for many different reasons. It’s 20 years since I lost my mum, so it isn’t nearly as raw, but for others it certainly is. I think this is a very mindful response.  

The post Mother’s Day, Mental Load and Being Left Out appeared first on The Parent Social.

Here Simply Glass Wipe Boards discusses five key benefits for families who read.

Reading helps children to expand their vocabulary

Exposing children to more words will help them to expand their vocabulary and their understanding of the world. That’s why it’s important to establish a regular reading routine with your children, no matter how young or old they are.

If your child is struggling, it’s crucial to read at a pace that suits them and pick a book that they’re comfortable with. Once they’re more confident with the basics, it’s likely that they’ll naturally transition to more complicated texts.

If you’re looking for inspiration on books to read with your family, here’s what other kids all over the country are currently reading:

Reading helps to reduce symptoms of depression

During those dark days, it can be difficult to think of a way out. However, research has shown that reading can help with these low feelings.

Picking up a book can help you to escape the harsh realities of life and help you to see the world from a different perspective. No matter whether you prefer a real-life hero story or a fictional sci-fi tale, those little breaks from reality can help you to manage your depression in a healthy way.

Some feel-good books you can enjoy with your kids include:

• Wonder – R.J Palacio
• Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life – James Patterson & Chris Tebbetts
• Rules – Cynthia Lord

Reading can help you to bond as a family

Between the morning school run and after-school rush, it can be difficult to find a quiet moment to spend with your children. However, if you introduce a reading routine into your day it can help you to spend a little bit more time with your children and form a closer bond.

A popular time to get into a book is right before bedtime. Not only can this help you to get closer to your child, but it can also help you to wind down and switch off before it’s time to sleep.

Reading can help you to get a better nights’ sleep

Research shows that using electronic devices before bed can keep your brain awake and prevent you from getting a good nights’ sleep. To avoid this, you and your family can use your bedtime story to prepare yourself for the night ahead.

To make the most of this time, make sure there are no distractions around before you start your book. Switch off phones, tablets and TVs and make sure there is minimal background noise so that you can get stuck into your book with ease.

Reading increases health and wellbeing on the whole

On the whole, reading can have a positive impact on health and wellbeing in kids and adults. Although it might be difficult to kickstart these habits as adults, you only need to read for 30 minutes a week or more to experience these benefits.

To help you and your family get started, here are a few easy reading tasks you and your kids can work through over the coming months:

Image sources: Simply Glass Wipe Boards

The post The Benefits of Reading as a Family – guest post appeared first on The Parent Social.

Separations and divorce are a difficult time for any adult, but when children are involved their physical and emotional wellbeing is the main priority. Family break-ups can create emotional distress for children if not handled in the right way.

Henry Brookman, senior divorce lawyer of Brookman Solicitors provides his expert insight into how to manage this difficult situation…

Reassure

During a separation children can go through a multitude of emotions. Sadness, confusion and guilt can affect their wellbeing, so you should both provide plenty of support and reassurance. Reassure your child that you still love and care for them, just like before. Make sure they understand they are of the utmost importance to you and that your love for them won’t change.

If you have multiple children, try to spend quality time with each of them individually. This will help ensure they all feel special, cared for and listened to. Additionally, make it a priority to ensure your children know the separation is not their fault. Emphasise that this was a decision made by both parents.

Children often blame themselves and pinpoint things they have said or done which may have caused the break-up. Placate their minds and let them know that this is definitely not the case.

Shield

Children shouldn’t be exposed to any adult acrimony. Bitterness or ill-feelings towards the other party should be kept well out of sight. When you talk about the break-up, limit what you tell them to what they need to know. Whether your separation is mutual and amicable or filled with animosity and resentment, children should be shielded from any potentially damaging adult issues.

How you break the news to them is also a very important step. Where possible, tell them as a couple to keep an authoritative and united front together as parents. Try to give age-appropriate information. Keep in mind that older children may want to understand and know more. Setting ground rules with the other parent is a good idea. Agree to keep things positive, avoid arguments and to always remain amicable while your children are present.

Encourage

Regardless of your efforts, this will be a difficult time for your children and it needs to be managed appropriately. Encourage them to be open and honest with their feelings. You don’t want them to bottle things up and deal with complex emotions on their own. Children can find it challenging to express their true thoughts, fears and feelings; be patient and allow them to open up without interrupting. Listen to what they say and answer their questions as best as you can. Encourage them to be open with you and the other parent. They should never be made to feel disloyal for speaking to either of you.

Negative behaviour changes such as anxiety, aggression, loss of appetite or trouble at school can be normal for children as they struggle to process difficult emotions. They may benefit from speaking to a doctor, psychologist, social worker or even close family member or friend who can act as a confidante. Getting them to talk and express their feelings is a fundamental step in ensuring they are in a positive mindset going forward.

About the Author

Henry Brookman is a divorce solicitor and senior partner at Brookman, a highly experienced family law firm with expertise in a full range of family legal matters including: divorce in the UK and internationally, complex financial issues, property settlements and children’s matters. Brookman is ranked by the Legal 500 and has been awarded the Law Society’s quality mark, Lexcel. For more information visit: www.brookman.co.uk.

Another post you might find interesting: Will Aid Month – Getting Wills Drafted

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The group is hosted by the passionate Devenia Besant (Dee). As and active user myself, I find this a very friendly, community-orientated and interactive place. Members can share information, ask for advice and recommendations, find out what’s happening and even sell things (however, there are no spam posts and it’s not for business advertisers). The group is a hub for families in the area and is a wealth of really useful information.

Epsom and Ewell Families – a new website

The Facebook group has snowballed and boasts well over 5000 members. Consequently, Dee has created the Epsom and Ewell Families website to fully service the community needs.

It is a one-stop platform that provides the local community with useful information and connects them with the business services they need. Additionally, there is a specific services directory and a blog. The blog focusses on ‘what’s on in the area and discusses issues of local interest.

The directory

The directory, which is constantly updated, contains a very comprehensive list of local services complete with reviews for each. All listings are reviewed by at least three people who have actually used the service because of this you get a real, honest opinion. It includes everything from beauty services and messy play children’s classes to wine educators and cake makers. 

The blog

Check them out here: 

Schools

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