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1·18 Oct 2026·on Son's football team lost 0-9 and he's calling it the best match of his life

Ha, this is the spirit. Mine is 7 and his skating batch had a mini race last month. He came fifth out of five and asked for celebration mishti. He got it 🙂

3·20 Sept 2026·on Zero period at 7.15 for class 9, and his tuition ends at 9 pm

Is the zero period compulsory, or one of those "recommended" ones? Our school's notices for my son's class say recommended and mean compulsory, so I always ask 🙂

0·24 Aug 2026·on Caught my daughter practising my signature. She says it's to save me signing her diary

The flourish is a good counter-move 🙂 Mine is in class 2 and already asks me to sign the reading log without hearing him read. Clearly the training starts early.

1·20 Aug 2026·on back at work with a 3 month old and lunch is whatever is in the office drawer

The two small meals thing holds for long research days too. My partner's version when our son was a baby was a box of muri and chanachur in the drawer and a proper roti roll at 3. Slightly dangerous, the muri box never lasted the week 🙂

1·18 Jul 2026·on My 11 year old learnt to iron his uniform and is now ironing everything in the house

Make the most of it! At 5 my son went through a phase of polishing everyone's shoes, Dadu's sandals included. Lasted about ten days. Get those kurtas in quickly.

2·12 Jul 2026·on 13 year old says she concentrates best after 10 pm. Do I believe her?

Is it getting done well at 11, or just getting done? With our son it's the second, but he's only 6.

2·9 Jul 2026·on Weekend Tamil reading class for an 8 year old, anywhere near Puppalaguda or Narsingi?

Not near you, sorry, and not Tamil. We looked for a Bengali reading class for our son around Sainikpuri for a year and found nothing in person, so we ended up with an online teacher twice a week. Thakuma checks the homework on a video call. Not what you want, but it worked better than I expected 🙂

4·4 Jul 2026·on First unit test in class 7. Near full marks in everything except social, 9 out of 20

Mine is still in early primary, so I'm answering as the boy who was exactly this in school. History was 'stories' to me too, until one teacher made us write each answer like a newspaper report: headline, what happened, who, when, why it mattered. Suddenly the names and dates had somewhere to go. Baba still teases me about my 4 out of 20 in class 6 🙂

3·23 Jun 2026·on DP maths starts in July. Does she need an 'IB tutor', or will a good maths tutor do?

Way ahead of my stage, ours is in class 2. But my didi's daughter did IB in Pune, and from what I heard, the maths itself any strong tutor could handle. Where she needed help was the IA, the written project, and that's where knowing IB mattered 🙂

2·21 Jun 2026·on Our 1 year old has worked out that my car keys mean I'm leaving. He hides them now.

Planning the TV around the parents' timings starts much earlier than 12. My 6 year old already asks if dida is coming over, because dida means cartoons 🙂

1·16 Jun 2026·on Elder son reports nothing about school. His younger brother reports everything, including the elder's day

We have just the one, so the bulletin is about his teacher instead. I now know what Miss had for lunch every day this week 🙂 I wonder if the elder one would talk more alone with you in the car, without the reporter in the back seat?

1·14 Jun 2026·on Anyone around Attapur or Rajendranagar who repairs kids' battery cars?

Ours did exactly this around Durga Puja last year, lights on, wheels dead. First check the wire going into the battery, one of ours had come loose. When that didn't fix it, the battery was gone. The inverter battery shop near us sold a matching one once I took the old one along to compare the label. Baba was thrilled to have a project 🙂 Sainikpuri is a long way from you, but any battery shop should manage it.

2·14 May 2026·on does anyone's company pay for extra childcare when you travel for work

Never seen it in a policy anywhere I've worked. When I had a run of out-of-town research sessions, my manager agreed to let me fly back the same night instead of staying over. Cost the company more in tickets, saved us the second night of care. Might be easier to ask for that kind of trade than for a new policy :)

0·11 May 2026·on Manthan School is a ten-minute walk from us. How do the little ones manage on a campus that size?

When we were looking for our son, every big campus said the pre-primary was 'separate', and it meant very different things. One had its own building and gate, another had a different corridor and that was it. Ask to walk the route your daughter would take from the gate to her classroom. I haven't been to Manthan, so I can't say which kind it is. For what it's worth, my Ma was far more worried about the big kids than he ever was :)

0·27 Apr 2026·on A two year old patient checked my teeth after I checked hers

At about that age our son did this with the barber's comb. Combed the barber's hair for a full minute, and the barber sat still for it.

1·10 Apr 2026·on Can she get through ICSE class 9 and 10 with a senior's old books?

This takes me back. I used my dada's books for two years in school and the margin notes were half my education. Some of his comments about the teachers were not meant for me. I'd let her choose: new for the ones she cares about, old for the rest.

6·1 Apr 2026·on reading my book club novel aloud to the baby. she's riveted, and it's a murder mystery

We did the same with my partner's law journals 🙂 At that age it's the voice they're listening to, apparently. Our boy's favourite word for a good while was 'adjourned'.