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Well we had to stop that real fast because the person who would cook would make the biggest mess in the world. So I had to change that to the person who cooked also cleaned but they only had to do it once a week. . .
"The older kids resisted some. What I decided I would do is I would pick up my youngest from daycare and go home and if there wasn't supper I would take the youngest one, put him in the car and we'd go out to eat. The first time I did that it was hilarious. They were really stunned. They smartened up for a while and then they fell off the wagon again and I did the same thing. "What I did that really turned my kids around was I would take them with me up to the library at Simon Fraser University (SFU). That was a real turning point. In the early years I didn't do that. I didn't take the kids up there. I would either find the time when the kids were looked after or whatever but when I decided that I would take the kids with me it changed them tremendously. They really enjoyed going up. My son would call it FSU. The library has a huge education department. They had a whole bunch of children's books so I would go and sit them in that section and they could sit on the floor and pullout all these books and look at them. My son used to like to go xerox his hand on the xerox machine. It only cost a nickel. He would xerox his hands. Whatever would keep him busy. "I would take them up there to the film nights. The film was
only a dollar. When I brought them in to that environment then they started
enjoying it a lot more and then they were a lot happier about Mom going up to
SFU. It was a place they knew. I wasn't just disappearing. I was going
someplace they knew and someplace that they occasionally went as well. "Your kids are part of your life and I think it's important that you have all of the parts of your life somehow connected." - Norma Child care Finding child care is a big challenge for many women who want to go back to school. One of the best places to call to find child care is your local health department, which is listed in the blue pages of the phone book under BC Government/Health. Because health departments are in charge of licensing child cares they will have a list, but they won't be able to tell you which places have space available. You'll have to call the centers yourself. Other sources of information:
Ministry of Women's Equality |
That made a big difference. It's something
that if I were ever advising anyone, an adult person with kids who is going
back to school I would say take the kids, to school. Show them where you're
going. What you're doing. Familiarize them with that place so that they know
that that's part of their lives. Because if you're going to school, that's a
part of your life. | Back | Contents | Next |