u/FriendsFannn

Hi Everyone,

I'm originally from Chesterfield (Walton area) but have been living in Australia for the last 9 years. I am moving back to the UK next year and we are looking at the Peak District as a potential area. I love the area from growing up here but I was looking for some advice on the best places to look to buy. We could afford around the £350,000 mark, probably not much more than that. We're looking for a small town/village that has at least a shop and a pub and walks on the doorstep. We're not too fussy where abouts in the Peaks but would be ideal if it was commutable to either Sheffield, Chesterfield or Manchester for my husband's work. He doesn't have a job yet but works in manufacturing so would need to be close to a town or city that had that sort of thing.

Any recommendations on places to look? I can give more info if needed.

edited because I put dollars! 🙈

Hi Everyone,

I hope this is allowed, please delete if not. My friend, who I've known for a few years, now lives in a different state to me but we keep in touch via messaging and voice notes. She recently told me in one of her latest updates that she has just been diagnosed with autism. It was one sentence at the end of a longer message detailing other updates to her life. I'm sort of surprised and sort of not but I don't know how to respond and I'm worried about responding in the wrong way.

I looked at a post asking a similar question but all the responses suggested asking if the person being told needed to do anything differently because usually the information was being passed on because the autistic person might need an adjustment. However, that doesn't seem quite the right response in this instance because she was just telling me as a sort of update about her life.

Any advice on the best way to respond would be really appreciated.

So far, I've come up with: Oh, wow. That's cool (is this appropriate?). Did you go for a diagnosis or was it suggested to you? (Is this too nosey? I'm really just including to show interest not because I'm desperate to know).

I'm definitely overthinking this 😂😂

Hi Everyone,

I've been living in Australia for the last 9 years and I am moving back to England in 2027. I only taught in England for 2 and a half years before I left. I taught in Australia for the whole 9 years I've been here. I was hoping you guys could answer any of the following questions. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

1. What is the general maternity policy in England in public primary schools? How long do you have to have been working to be eligible?
2. What is the job market like at the moment? I will have 11 years overall experience by the time I'm back. I've primarily done Learning Support Teacher (can explain this further if needed- it's SENCO but you don't have a class, you do small group work on top of the coordinator work). I have also been an Assistant Principal for 3 years (kind of like a key stage leader - on the executive team)
3. What is work/life balance/ofsted etc. like at the moment? Australia is seen as being way better but I don't think it is. There's a lot of extra work still, especially in the public system.
4. How obsessed is everyone with assessing? My school in Australia is absolutely OBSESSED with assessing, it feels like all we ever do a lot of the time. Is this happening in England too?
5. Teaching Assistants - are there still 1 per class in infants and then shared in junior? I'm basing this off the one school I properly worked at and the schools I did my placements at, I know it's probably different in different schools.
6. Does the individual school pay you or the department for Education?

Thank you so much for answering any of my above questions! I'm sure I will be back again with more, but don't want to bore you all too much 😂

Has anyone else experienced serious sleep regressions at 12 months old? My son has always been a pretty good sleeper overnight. We've had our ups and downs with naps and getting him to sleep in the evenings, but usually once he's asleep, he'd sleep through. I know we are incredibly lucky to have experienced this and I've always been nervous about it changing. The last few weeks his overnight sleep has gone completely off.

- He does one hour and a half nap a day from approximately 12 until 1.30

- He still has formula feeds 3 times a day but also eats a decent amount of solids 4 times a day

- Bedtime is at 7.30 (just recently moved from 7) and he gets up at 7am.

- He has been sick recently - Rhinovirus and then hand foot and mouth. But he seems to be better from that now.

- Could also be teething but I've given nurofen tonight as his teeth seemed to be bothering him but it hasn't worked.

He's started waking up in the night and being really hard to get back down and to stay in his cot. Usually, once he's up, he's up for an hour and a half, sometimes more. I usually try not to feed him because I don't want him getting into the habit of getting calorie intake overnight as he hasn't needed this for a long time. However, if it's been longer than half an hour/ an hour, I'll give him as much milk as he wants. Sometimes this works and he's straight to sleep, no problems. But this isn't always the case and sometimes he'll still struggle to go back to sleep. Or he'll go back to sleep but wake up 5 mins later. This is another reason I don't go straight to the milk. We try to temperature control his room to around 21°C and he has a good amount of layers on but never feels too hot. He's not usually really active either. Some nights he can be, kicking his legs around wriggling about. But often, he'll be still on us, still in his cot but then will wriggle and move about as soon as we stop patting him or move our hand away

It's 2.50am where I am right now and I've been up for an hour and a half. I've had to swap with my husband because I was getting frustrated and needed a break. Has anyone else experienced this at the 12 month mark? Is it just developmental and will solve by itself? Any suggestions or ideas are very welcome.

P.S my husband is incredibly involved and we do swap and support each other equally but it doesn't stop us from both being sleep deprived.

My son is 13 months old. He's been formula fed since 6 months and still has formula out of a baby bottle with a teat lid. I know babies don't need formula after 13 months and you're supposed to wean them off but he still seems to need it and I don't know how to get him off it.

He was having 3 bottles of around 200ml a day, but he'd usually only drink around 100/150 of his afternoon bottle. He'd have a bottle when he woke up at 7, then at 2 after his nap and then one at bedtime. We've taken away the afternoon one but he's now basically having that but across the evening. He drinks 250ml before bed at 6.45 (sometimes he only drinks a little bit of this and then has the rest at 7.30 right before bed), he goes down at 7.30 and then he'll wake up a few times and want more milk, usually having between 100 and 150ml extra which is basically the feed we took away. Because he's having all this milk right before bed, he ends up with a leaky nappy. He eats plenty of solids and we offer him 4 meals a day. Breakfast at about 8.30, lunch at 11.00, afternoon tea at 2.30 and dinner at 5.30 and we feed him until he doesn't want anymore at every mealtime/snack time. We try to get plenty of protein in him as well as veggies/fruit and carbs. He's 95th percentile height and only 55th percentile weight so he obviously does need it. (I was a very slim child even though I ate plenty).

Thank you for reading this far! Has anyone ever had this problem and how did you wean baby off formula milk? Or should I just let him keep having it as he clearly needs it?

I've just started rewatching for the third time and it hit me how much Mitchell is ashamed of his "gayness". He constantly feels judged and tries to hide the fact he's gay. He's embarrassed when Cam is flamboyant and unashamed of himself. By the end, Mitchell is so much more comfortable with who he is and doesn't worry so much about all that stuff. I don't see it spoken about much but I think it's wonderful that he makes such a change. I think Cam is partially responsible for that change and helped Mitchell come out of his shell.

I see so many posts that are negative on daycare (especially recently) and so I wanted to do a little post on the positives. I have to send my 1 year old to daycare because I had to go back to work and I know a lot of people are in this situation. I've felt very down and sad on it but I've decided to think of the positives and focus on that instead. This isn't to say there aren't issues, but rather looking at a different perspective, I guess.

1. How much my LO learns and how much they entertain him. I've noticed he's learnt so much in the last month since he started and a lot of it is coming from daycare. He actually really enjoys it and I see from the app posts that they do so many lovely activities with them. He recently had a week off cos we were all sick and by the end of the week, I was struggling to find things to do to keep him entertained.
2. The educators really love and care for him. Daycare is the village that we pay for. The saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Well, daycare is that village. Our babies make genuine connections and relationships with the educators and I see when I drop him off and pick him up how much they care for him. He's only been there 6 weeks but already they know so much about him and always look so excited to see him. He's started smiling at them in the mornings too and even reached for one of them the other day (he still cries when I leave but I know he settles and is happy once I'm gone). I know there are some daycares that aren't so good with this but the majority are and the vast majority of educators are wonderful people.
3. It makes me more present and excited to be doing the mundane tasks with him. After the week off when we've been ill, I noticed when my husband got home from work, I was excited to pass on jobs to him and I found myself feeling frustration during more difficult times like when I'm giving the baby solids. I felt a bit more fed up than usual. The day I went back to work, it was quite nice to be at work doing something different and when I went to pick him up from daycare, I was SO excited to get to him and that evening I felt more present and connected to him.
4. Social with other babies. My LO is very social and wants to go up to other babies and interact. This can be hard when you're just out and about and you don't know how other people will be if your 1 year old starts climbing all over their toddler or whatever, so I feel like I'm constantly having to pull him back and try to work out the vibe of the parents 😂 at daycare he gets to be social and start making friends.
5. Edit: thought of another one! Food! They feed them so well. The days he's at daycare, I don't stress at all about what he has for dinner. Pouch and pasta? Fab! Pouch on toast? Great. Just a pouch? Brilliant. I know he's had very nutritional meals at daycare so I don't have to feel like I need to make him some amazing nutritious meal and it takes the heat off a bit. (There's nothing wrong with pouches, they just aren't super high value nutritionally because the ingredients has been heated to very high temperatures so it will keep for a long time without preservatives)

I know there are negatives to daycare, but this post is about celebrating the positives and trying to look at it from a different perspective, especially for those of us who don't really have a choice.