hazel_badminton_1527

0·29 Oct 2026·on Son wants commerce with maths in class 11, and I can't tell him where it leads

Fair point. When I asked him last night he said economics, and then 'maybe something with data'. Not a firm list yet, but not nothing either.

6·28 Oct 2026·on 11 year old spends his pocket money on canteen puffs and brings the tiffin home

Would a middle path work, where he gets canteen money for one or two fixed days a week and tiffin the rest? That's where we landed. He picks the days. It ended the daily argument, though Friday is always canteen day, obviously.

1·16 Oct 2026·on Tuition has scheduled its own mock test in the same week as school mid-terms

Just tell the tuition teacher she's skipping the mock this time. You're the one paying, and the school exam is the one that counts 🙂 We did this with my son's maths tutor in 8th and nobody was offended.

1·5 Oct 2026·on Private tutor for MYP sciences, or does it clash with how the school marks?

We did the same with the rubric, except our son took it to the tutor himself, so he had to understand it first. That turned out to be half the benefit :)

2·24 Sept 2026·on 10 month old has started climbing our stairs, and the top has nowhere to fix a gate

Our old flat had stairs when my son was this age, and we did both. Gates top and bottom, and once he was crawling well we practised coming down feet first on his tummy, only on the bottom two steps. He got it surprisingly quickly 🙂 For the top, some gates come with a kit for round posts, worth asking the shop. The gates were the main thing though, the practising was extra.

0·28 Jul 2026·on Cousin's wedding in December. Our class 12 daughter wants to be there all four days

The main two days sounds right to me. My son is only in class 9 and we've already been told to plan around exams for anything in December. It keeps starting earlier.

6·27 Jul 2026·on Class 2 homework shows up on the app at 9 pm, when she's already asleep

Had exactly this in class 3. Clinic till 8, so I'd see it at 10. We did it at breakfast and the teacher never once minded. In class 2 it's a worksheet, not a crisis 🙂

3·20 Jul 2026·on My grandsons are back from a month with their parents in the Gulf, and the little one won't settle

The school mornings are the part I'd keep an eye on, because that's where the worry shows itself. With my son, when he was smaller, it was always mornings after a big change. What helped us was a very boring routine. Same breakfast, same walk, and calls at a fixed time every day rather than whenever the parents were free. Short and regular worked better than long and unpredictable. It took about a month for us, not a week, so please don't lose heart.

1·29 Jun 2026·on The class 9 girls on the school bus have adopted my 5 year old. They also show him reels the whole way

Half of this sounds lovely, to be fair. Older kids looking out for a small one on a long ride is not nothing. I'd keep the seat-saving, lose the phones, and tell the girls exactly that 🙂

0·13 Jun 2026·on What goes on a 'call me if' list for our 7 month old's grandmother and caregiver?

Speaking as a paediatrician, what I see go wrong most often isn't the list, it's that nobody knows who decides. Write next to each item whether they call you or call the doctor directly. And let your own doctor set the fever number, not the internet and not me 🙂

4·13 Jun 2026·on Online 'pre-college' certificate from a foreign university. Has anyone's teen done one?

That's useful. So the free version plus a small project of her own would read about the same?

0·12 Jun 2026·on Online 'pre-college' certificate from a foreign university. Has anyone's teen done one?

These ads have found my son too 😊 He wants the one with a campus visit attached. Still deciding. What subject is your daughter looking at?

3·5 Jun 2026·on first week of inter. leaves at 7, back at 8.30, and college is 'fine'

Not inter, but my 14 year old's day got much longer this year with coaching, and the first month was exactly this. Grunts and sleep. It eased once he had friends in his batch and the routine stopped being new. I stopped asking "how was it" and started asking about one specific thing, the canteen, one teacher, the bus, and got a bit more than "fine" :)

1·2 Jun 2026·on 10 yr old back from a month with his cousins. new vocabulary, some of it not ok

We had this after a cricket camp at 10. I asked him calmly if he knew what it meant. He didn't, and was quite horrified when I told him. Never heard it again 🙂

6·22 May 2026·on Daycare wants an 'admission fee' to move him up to their pre-nursery, in the same building

I see a lot of parents in clinic who feel pushed to 'start early'. In my experience schools don't ask for a pre-nursery certificate at nursery admission. Whether the new room would suit him better is a separate question, and I'd go and see it before deciding 🙂

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

In my OPD it's the stethoscope. One boy listened to my chest and told me I was 'a bit loud'.

0·22 Apr 2026·on Since the UKG teacher started a daily summary message, my son tells me nothing about his day

Ask about what the message can't know. Who he sat with at lunch, what was funny, who got into trouble. Mine stopped answering 'how was school' at five and never started again, but 'who made you laugh today' still works at fourteen, most days 🙂

1·17 Apr 2026·on Every grade on her class 1 report is an A except 'listening skills'. What is that measuring?

Agree on asking for an example. One thing to add from the clinic side: if the example is about instructions not being followed, a hearing check is an easy thing to rule out at this age. Most of the time it's normal and it really is the chatty neighbour, but it saves you wondering.