Warning: If you were to use a Twitter hashtag to surmise the content of this post it would be #middleclassproblems. 

If 2012 was the year I finally felt mature (by having a baby), then 2014 is the year that I’ve started feeling like a parent who has more than just a duty of care for said baby. A large portion of the early part of parenthood is quite boring, regardless of it also being delightful. You change nappies, you sleep, you become numb to the cries - which is quite sad in itself. So when your kids start communicating, well, wow. It’s amazing to be able to have a conversation, even if it often about Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom (which I actually think is well written, and has humour in there for adults - and not in a Family Guy kind of way). My daughter turned two last week, and it’s time to start thinking about pre-school. Blimey.

I live in St George, a suburb east of central Bristol, and currently one of the areas undergoing significant amounts of gentrification. Craft ales, delis and the like. At its heart, although it’s an area not totally poverty-stricken, it’s down-at-heel (ripe for gentrifying) and it certainly isn’t Clifton (the London equivalent of Clifton would be Pimlico or Chelsea, probably). Anyway - our local primary school (a 5 minute walk) just got rated excellent by Ofsted, and the attached pre-school is also in high demand. We couldn’t get our daughter in there. But it turned out to be perhaps a blessing in disguise, as we started investigating Montessori schools. Some info on that here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education. Alumni of Montessori schools include Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Jimmy Wales to name a few. I’m sure they’ve convinced a few parents to part with the readies based on those names and I was no different. The philosophy at pre-school level is best described as one of ‘structured play’, with a focus on, well, focus: Encouraging children to concentrate on developing aptitude with one toy or instrument, as well as a responsibility for keeping things tidy, coupled with self-directed learning and exploration. I doubt we’ll keep her there for primary and secondary education but this is a critical period of development and it’s an exciting adventure for all of us. Hopefully it won’t feel like I’m using my daughter as a sociology experiment…