I honestly can’t believe how time went so fast! I had such great plans for the summer holiday and had even created a mental “To Do” list which included writing several blog posts. But alas here I am in September and not even one post! Not 1!!

What happened you may ask? Okay here’s the thing – the children came home on holiday and the pleasant “distractions” started. A few people have asked me “but your children are much older (18 & 21) so what kind of ‘distractions’ could you possibly be talking about?” My answer – You have no idea!

The truth is that parenting is a life time job requiring your attention at every stage. You just exchange one set of issues for another and at certain stages you require to put in more physical effort than mental and at other times the reverse is the case but trust me physical or mental it can be equally demanding – very rewarding but demanding. Parenting is also a “job” that requires you to constantly upgrade your skills to be able to navigate the different stages. I can confidently tell you that over this summer I have undergone some informal skills upgrade in negotiation, conflict resolution, communication, budgeting just to mention a few. I have my amazing children to thank for providing me the needed environment for the upgrade to take place.

One thing I have also learnt is to make the necessary investment at every stage of parenting and enjoy the process because time really goes fast. You wake up one day and it’s like your children grew over night. The tiny tot who always wanted you to hold his or her hand everywhere you went now cringes at your PDA (public display of affection).

I do apologize for going missing in action. I’m back and I come armed with plenty “gist” from the summer holiday so please don’t give up on me just yet and keep watching this space for more parenting tips and gist.

Charity