Old-school note in the bag beats apps every time
THE art of “juggling” motherhood and work went haywire for me this week.
Result? I descended into a guilt-ridden hell as the two worlds collided.
There’s a nifty new system in schools called Aladdin – an app that tells you about the day to day goings on in the classroom and school.
It worked really well in Covid times when we weren’t allowed to go near anyone.
Genius I hear you say – or Genie-us even – but how many phone apps can one brain deal with?
We are living in a digital age where nobody uses verbal communication and the art of sending a ‘note home’ to update parents of ugent meetings is a thing of the past.
From sports days to school tours, to lovely notes about the weekly learning, everything you need to know is on the app.
The issue is that ‘everything’ is on there, so there is no knowing which message is the most important in among them all.
Sometimes I’m so busy in a sea of Whatsapp messages on the phone, with the
Aladdin ones mixed in, that I take my eye off the ball.
We have Whatsapp mammy groups, work groups, family groups... my brain can’t cope with the onslaught of digital messaging. You could get a school message and be in the middle of work and think, “I’ll come back to that later” only to then overlook the message entirely.
What happens inevitably is there are so many messages coming into the one device that we end up missing the important ones.
This week the world of parenting and work responsibilities locked on a collision course and I felt like a big fat failure of a mammy.
Sitting with my editor completing a mandatory work course, the phone rang and my partner John was on the other end sounding flustered.
“Hey love, did you know we were supposed to visit Erin’s school today for a tour of her classroom and a show?” he asked. My insides suddenly felt all jittery, my stomach started feeling quivery, my heart sank.
It dawned on me. I had read this message a few weeks back and had never put the school visit in the diary.
We were the only parents not there and a distraught Erin cried all the way home.
This is not the first disappointment she will face and in the grander scheme of things nobody was injured and we are all safe.
But the feeling of shame and guilt at hearing her little voice saying, ‘All the other mammies were there’ was tough.
I had to explain to her that mammies are only human and we all make mistakes.
Life was a hell of a lot simpler before technology replaced the art of note writing!
Hearing her say all other mammies were there was tough