How to choose your child’s nursery

Nursery

It is ironic that for many of us one of the first major choices we have when we become a parent is about who else is going to “parent” our baby. If you are going down the nursery route, this decision often has to be made prenatally depending on the length of time you wish to take for maternity leave and the waiting list time on your local nurseries.

When I first went about looking for a nursery for Big Sis, I didn’t have a clue what I should be looking for. Inevitably, I made a wrong decision and I was unhappy with the nursery (Nursery A) that I initially chose for Big Sis. The problem being that when you are required to make this decision, you are still in the mind-set of someone without children, someone whose priority is themselves and their work. Not yet a parent, whose priority is their child. With this hat on, decisions regarding childcare are made with the priorities of cost, convenience and ease of getting to and from work, not necessarily the priority that you have once you actually ARE a parent.

I had chosen Nursery A as it was close to the tube station, was located in a beautiful Victorian house, was brand new and had designer furniture for children, a computer room, a sensory room, a music room and offered baby yoga and science lessons. I was given my own electronic fob to get in and out of the nursery building and on-line access to the nursery’s CCTV cameras allowing me to see what Big Sis was up-to from the comfort of my computer at work. Formula milk, nappies, sun screen etc. were all included in the fees meaning all I had to do was drop off my baby in the morning, and the nursery operating hours were long (early drop off and late pick-up) so I could meet my work commitments. Staff advertised themselves for evening babysitting sessions. Oh, and there was an organic kitchen on-site. Why wouldn’t any working parent choose this nursery?

It was only when I realised my mistake (that I had been woo-ed by aesthetics and meeting my own needs) and moved Big Sis along with Lil Bro to a different nursery (Nursery B) that I realised what a nursery was supposed to be about. The child.

Nursery B was further from the tube station, had more modest grounds, smaller and more old-fashioned classrooms, no designated music room or computer room, no electronic fobs or CCTV, late drop-off and early pick-ups (making getting to work on time pretty hard) and the requirement to provide your own milk, nappies, and sun screen (such that there were regular rebukes from staff when you forgot one thing or another). Yet it had a waiting list a mile long. Both nurseries had a similar fee. I realised that none of the “extras” were relevant. The management and staff at Nursery B were excellent. That is all that matters. Nursery B’s operation was aimed at the children, not designed to suit and woo parents. But how can you tell this when you visit?

Here are my tips for what to look for so you can get it right first time:

Standard no-brainers:

“What is the atmosphere like?”

“Do the children there enjoy going to the nursery?”

“What is the food like? Is it cooked on site?”

“What activities do the children do?”

“What are the facilities like?”

“Where do the children sleep?”

“Are the premises clean, safe, inviting and child friendly?”

“What is the policy for children with special needs/ allergies/ medical conditions?”

“What are the policies for if your child is sick?”

“What are the nursery opening and closing times and how many days of the year is the nursery open?”

“Do the staff appear warm, competent and knowledgeable?”

“Is there any outdoor space?”

“What are the fees?” – I don’t think you’ll forget this one. Remember to bring a hanky as the response will be eye-watering.

Additional gems:

Check the Ofsted Report

I cannot stress the importance of checking out a nursery’s Ofsted report and rating. Ofsted is the government agency that inspects all schools and childcare provisions in the UK. They report on all manner of things from the built environment, health and safety procedures and management. This might all seem extremely mundane and irrelevant when all you want is lovely, bubbly, staff that are going to welcome and cuddle your baby, but for anyone that has worked for any type of institution or business before, the competence of management matters. Within the NHS, it is evident that competent managers can instil high service standards, efficient service and good employee morale. The reverse is also true, and this is as true for nurseries as the NHS. If you can, go for an Ofsted Outstanding nursery. Big Sis’s first nursery had newly opened and had not been inspected at the time Big Sis started, but when it was inspected, it achieved a “satisfactory” ranking (two levels below “Outstanding”) which confirmed my doubts about it and precipitated my moving her to Outstanding nursery B, which lived up to its Ofsted rating. Prior to experiencing first hand the difference between “satisfactory” and “outstanding”, I thought – it can’t make much difference – “good” is “good” right? Well orange squash also tastes pretty good until you try Champagne. As most people choose a nursery and stick to it, they never usually get to know just what a difference a nursery can make. If you feel you have made a wrong choice like I did, it is ALWAYS worth changing.

Experience the management

As well as checking out the objective management ratings on the Ofsted report, check it out for yourself. A well-managed nursery would ensure that the phones were answered promptly and that if they say they will get back to you, they do. How well organised and managed is the viewing that they give you of the nursery? How senior are the staff that are showing you around? If you do not think that these administrative things matter, then think about how much they would matter if your child were at that nursery. What if no one answered the phone when you were ringing the nursery to convey an important message about your child? What if staff tell you they will do something for your child, but they don’t? If senior staff are not there to show you around, are they ever there? The best functioning services are ones where administration and front line staff are both working efficiently under effective and accessible senior management. At nursery B the senior manager was on site every day and knew the name of every child.

Ask about staff turnover

In my mind, effectively looking after young children is not something that can easily be done if you are not happy (if you don’t believe me you can extrapolate this from lots of post natal depression literature). If a nursery has high staff turnover then I cannot imagine that the staff can be very happy working there. During Big Sis’s 18 month time at nursery A, her “mentor” or “Key worker” changed 3 times because of staff resignations. The nursery manager also changed 3 times. This discontinuity of staff cannot make for stable attachments and relationships with the children and indicate that there is something unsatisfactory systemically that is preventing people from wanting to remain employed there. If staff are unhappy in their jobs, how can they provide the highest standard of care for your child? The average time that the key staff had been in place at nursery B was 9 years. As the fees for both nurseries were the same, it was clear that where one had chosen to spend the fee on aesthetics and extras to woo parents, the other had chosen to spend on training, valuing and retaining key and experienced staff. I know which matters more to me.

Ask about incident forms and how they manage difficult children

Big Sis was bitten or scratched by other children in her class at least 10 to 15 times in her 18 month career at nursery A. Other children in her class were also being bitten and scratched and we parents almost had to form a line to sign the incident forms when we collected our children. We would be told that a new toddler had been admitted to the class who had not yet been “socialised” by the nursery but that they would get the child under control soon. Only then, they would admit another “unsocialised” child. Eventually I had to sign an incident form saying that Big Sis had bitten another child (although she never bit anyone at home), and to tell the truth, I was rather glad that Big Sis was retaliating rather than being a teething ring for the other children. After Big Sis transferred to the nursery B she was bitten once and scratched once in a period of 28 months. She didn’t bite anyone. Lil Bro, who has only known the outstanding nursery has never been bitten or scratched and has never bitten another child at nursery. He has bitten his sister at home so it is not as if he is a particularly placid non-biting child. In my experience, biting is a very normal aggressive reaction in children and most children in the 0-3 year age group will do it at some point. Initially when Big Sis was being bitten at nursery, I was sympathetic to the nursery as I am aware that “all children bite”, however, on witnessing how much less this type of behaviour was occurring at a well- run nursery I am pretty sure that the level of biting was related to the nursery’s care (or lack of).

The nursery may not tell you, but it is worth asking about the level of incident reports as this is data that they are obliged to collect, so they should have it (although of course bear in mind that the very worst nurseries will have the lowest levels of incident reports, as they will be negligent on keeping up their reporting).

Examine how well the staff know the children

It is difficult to assess this. All nurseries will put forward their best people to do viewings with prospective parents. It is important to view as many staff as possible and be able to quiz them, and ask them questions, rather than limit questions to the member of staff showing you around, who will have been selected as knowledgeable. In real life, this person will likely have little to do with looking after your child as they are too busy showing other prospective parents around. Try and ask a random member of staff questions like:

“Do you like working here?”

“How long have you worked here?”

“How many children are in your class?”

“How many children are you directly responsible for?”

“How many children in your class have got food allergies, who are they and what exactly are they allergic to?”

Point at a random child and ask: “What’s this child’s favourite activity?”, “Who are his friends?”, “What makes him upset?”

If you have a child with food allergies like I have, it is absolutely paramount that all members of staff know who your child is and their allergies. I have heard of nurseries where children have been given foods that they are allergic to. Nursery B went the extra mile. Not only did all staff know Lil Bro and his exceptional dietary requirements, rather than excluding Lil Bro from cooking activities on account of his dairy, wheat and egg allergies, they bought him his own mixing bowl, and baking utensils. It’s this attention to detail that makes a nursery “outstanding”.

Interrogate parents of children that already attend

As well as confirming the standard information, find out how well the staff know the parents. At nursery A, the majority of staff, aside from the staff in Big Sis’s room had no idea who I was even though I dropped off and picked up Big Sis almost every day. I would have to say “I’m Big Sis’s mum” daily. At nursery B, everyone from manager, kitchen staff, to receptionist to teachers in other classes knew whose mother I was on sight. This is really good, and a credit to the management. You might think this is irrelevant, but it shows stability of staff and how aware staff are of the children in their care. Knowing who mothers and fathers are is important as it shows that they are interested in the children they are looking after and their families. Your child is not just “a child” that they are paid to look after.

Another difference that I found between the two nurseries was that many parents were coming from a very long way to drop their children at the nursery B, whilst most at the convenient nursery A by the tube station lived in close proximity. This makes sense, as if a nursery is very good, then people are willing to travel long distances to go there. If a nursery has many parents travelling a long way to attend, you can take it that this nursery is good.

Ask about the Early Years Foundation Stage

All childminders and nurseries are required to provide “early education” in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage document. If you want to be very mean and test the nursery’s knowledge, you can read the document and test them on it. I personally wouldn’t, but I might just want to check that staff don’t look at me blankly if I mention it .

These are just a few suggestions. In the end, you will have to make up your own mind, but bear in mind that early childcare is an important decision. Many parents spend much time and many sleepless nights researching and visiting a child’s secondary or primary school options, but just put their babies into the nearest nursery to allow them to get to work. I know; I did this. In addition, the research, visits and crucially the decision is often one made single-handed by a heavily pregnant woman who really would rather a sit down and a nap.

Yet if you work full time, like I did, your children will be spending more hours per year at nursery than at any future school in their life. Further, brain development is at its maximal in the preschool years, meaning the child’s learning potential from its environment is maximal at this age and may have long lasting impact on brain development. Time and time again, research has shown that it is not the “type” of childcare (childminder, nanny, nursery) that matters, it is the QUALITY (see my paper: Liang, 2013).

Shouldn’t choosing a nursery be a serious consideration for both parents rather than a quick decision made by a brain addled, third-trimester mum? Hopefully my tips will help.

Reference:

Liang, H., Pickles, A., Wood, N. & Simonoff, E., (2012) Early Adolescent Emotional and Behavioural Outcomes of Non-parental Preschool Childcare. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology , 47, 399-407.

Why there is no autism epidemic

ICD

Strictly speaking, the term “epidemic” should be reserved for infectious diseases. I realise that the term has now bled into everyday language to mean a large rise in prevalence rates for anything (e.g. obesity epidemic), but the original clinical definition was to describe the spread of infectious diseases (e.g. ebola epidemic). I’m a clinical terminology pedant; I lose sleep over people that call a “fascination” an “obsession”, so you can imagine my loathing of the headlines of “autism epidemic” to describe the increased numbers of people being given a diagnosis of autism. The reported autism prevalence rates have increased from around 1/100 to 1/68 (that’s about one child in every 2 state school classrooms). However, even if the lay terminology is accepted, the rise in numbers of people diagnosed with autism has more to do with changing diagnostic classifications and awareness than an environmental hazard that shock-headlines would like us to anticipate. There are many press and internet articles that discuss this, but I didn’t feel that they fully explored the territory, so here is a researcher and clinician’s view of the reasons for increased rates of autism.

Why do boundaries in classification change?

Autism is primarily a genetic disorder and the genetic basis of autism is pretty much undisputed now. Although environmental hazards may play a role, these are generally on the basis of a pre-existing genetic vulnerability. There are several known genetic disorders already identified that highly predispose to autism (e.g. Fragile X, tuberous sclerosis, neurofibromatosis), but these disorders account for only a small proportion of the total incidence of autism. The bulk of people with autism have what is called “idiopathic autism” the genes for which have yet to be identified (although several genes are suspected and are undergoing rigorous going over by scientists, none have been conclusively proved).

The identification of genes for autism is a tricky problem, as it is not a single gene that is wonky in autism. If it were, then it would have been identified long ago, like other single gene defects (cystic fibrosis, tuberous sclerosis) and we would be able to test for it readily with a genetic test. It is likely that there are multiple genes, say 6 (this is an educated guess), that are all required in order to generate the disorder. These genes are common, and both you and I are probably carrying several of these genes right now and have already handed them over to our children. Like in the National Lottery though, it is quite common for individuals to have a few of the numbers that come up, but it is much rarer to have all 6 numbers together. In the case of autism, only the people with all 6 genes get autism. Also like in the National Lottery where 5 numbers will get a small pay-out, people with 5 genes may get a watered down version of autism.

Scientists have been using all the tricks available to them to try and elucidate the precise gene combination. A few years ago, the computer capability to do Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) (where you sequence the entire genome of subjects with autism and the entire genome of subjects without autism, bung the lot in a very big computer and get it to output the combinations of genes that are common to people with autism but not present in the people without) was supposed to lead to a major breakthrough in autism research. It didn’t. The reason being that as all scientists know; if you put sh*t data in, you get sh*t data out. The conclusion amongst researchers was this: the people that we are defining as “autistic” and “not autistic” are wrong. If there are non-autistic people in the “autistic” group; or more likely, autistic people in the “not autistic group”, this will mess up the results.

How are we currently diagnosing autism and is it correct?

The current classification manuals for diagnosing autism (and other mental health problems) are the DSM (used in the USA) and ICD (used in Europe) manuals. My husband has a similar book for “diagnosing” if a mushroom that he finds on the heath is poisonous or not. There is no blood test or scan, only the basic science of observation and interrogation. You might, (and some do) dispute the validity of such classification manuals, but it has thus far served my husband, who has a penchant for putting foraged fungi into his mouth, well (i.e. he has correctly been able to avoid the death cap by consulting his book). A hundred or so years ago, manuals like these were used to diagnose everything from brain tumour to Down’s syndrome (doctors of old diagnosed brain tumours from symptom check-lists including things such as headaches and vision problems, and having round faces and “Mongolian eyes” suggested Down’s syndrome). By fine tuning the classification and studying the people identified, it has become possible to find causes and cures. If classification had not initially taken place, cures would not have been found. This is where we are currently at with autism, fine-tuning the classifications based on new research findings, the precursor to elucidating cause and generating treatments and cures.

The by-product of fine-tuning the classification manuals is a change in disorder prevalence rates. Old classification manuals stated that all children with autism had a learning difficulty, this was found not to be true and newer classifications reflect this. Older classifications state that autism is largely a disorder that only affects boys; newer classifications describe what symptoms may look like in girls. In previous classification manuals, it was stated that if a child had ADHD, they could not have autism, this is now known not to be the case and indeed 30%-50% or so of children with autism have ADHD. New classifications allow this diagnosis to be made. Thus, over the years, with increased research pointing to a wider distribution of the core symptoms of what “we” scientists and clinicians see as autism, and with each revision of the classification manuals, the description of “an autistic child/ person” has changed vastly. An intelligent, inattentive girl with core features of autism, diagnosed with autism today would not have received a diagnosis even 50 years ago, and I am pretty sure that our current classification will not be the last revision.

Some might call this changing boundary of diagnosis pharma and clinical collusion to “medicalise natural variation”; but as I mentioned previously, I prefer to see it as a scientific journey we are halfway/ dare-I-even-believe three quarters of the way through, towards an understanding of aetiology and generation of treatment and cure. Who knows, when aetiology is found, the boundaries may yet shrink back.

The conclusion to the journey may not be far off. Whilst geneticists are relying on better patient classifications to do genetic studies on, neurophysicists are relying on better patient classifications to do neuroimaging and functional neuroimaging studies on. We are already almost at the stage where a computer can accurately predict if a person has autism or not based on their brain scan (Ecker 2010). It may be within my life-time (my grandpa lived to 104 years so I have an optimistic life-expectancy) that the diagnostic classification manuals can be ditched for a brain scan or set of genetic tests; just as has already happened in the case of brain tumour or Down’s syndrome.

Improving awareness

Raising awareness of health conditions is a great thing. Many people have benefitted from the increased awareness of autism over the last 10 – 20 years. Autism is a condition that babies are born with and that they will grow and live with life-long. There is no current treatment for the core symptoms, let alone a cure, but the correct support for the child, family and school, can have a significant impact on outcomes. Improving awareness encourages people to come forward for assessment and diagnosis and access support; improving awareness leads to requests for more and better services; improving awareness leads to higher profile and political will to spend on autism; improving awareness leads to better acceptance and understanding of people with autism. I can say nothing but good things about raising the profile and awareness of autism. In 1988 when Rainman was first released, I had never heard of autism. I think if a film about autism was released now, the majority of people would have heard of the condition. Without a doubt, the number of families seeking autism assessments for their children has increased, and this can only mean increases in diagnostic rates.

An epiphenomenon to improving awareness that has also contributed to increased prevalence rates is due to what can be discretely called “diagnostic inflation”; or what can be better understood as “overdiagnosis” or “misdiagnosis”. It is an unpopular but real notion. It is one thing to “raise awareness” of autism, but it is another to educate about autism. I think if I surveyed a group of 100 parents, they would all have heard of autism but I think that only a handful of the 100 parents surveyed would be able to give a passable definition of the core symptoms of autism.

Why stop at parents? Teachers, GPs, paediatricians, child psychologists and child psychiatrists, especially those that trained ten or twenty years ago when autism was relatively unknown and unsexy may not be up-to-date on autism and certainly many fewer will have completed and maintained specialist training on autism diagnosis. Couple this with the improved awareness from parents of the diagnosis and the political will to allow access to substantial resources (welfare and educational) only for a diagnosis of autism and you have a system that will favour increased diagnosis.

I think that now that the job on awareness has been done, we need to work harder on the education front.

Has there been any real increase in autism at all?

This was the topic of discussion at the last Royal College of Psychiatry conference I went to. The consensus was that there was, but that this real increase was much less dramatic than the increase accounted for by classification changes and increased awareness. Many studies have focused on insults in pregnancy and environmental toxins. The research on these has yielded minor or inconsistent results, certainly nothing that alone would account for the real rise seen. The only factor that was given significant credibility was that of the increased age of the mother AND FATHER of autistic children.

Whilst awareness of the effects of maternal age on children’s outcome has been well-publicised (increased risk of Down’s syndrome as one well-known example), the risks of older dads has been less so. Yet, paternal age has long been established as a risk factor for schizophrenia (Malaspina 2001), and there is now emerging evidence for association of paternal as well as maternal age with autism (Reichenberg 2006; Durkin 2008; Sandin 2012).

It is ironic that many people sought to blame a vaccine for increasing levels of autism, in some instances sparking fears of a real epidemic (of measles), when in fact, like so many other health problems, the cause may prove to be within our own life-styles.

References:

Ecker C, Marquand A, Mourão-Miranda J, Johnston P, Daly EM, Brammer MJ, Maltezos S, Murphy CM, Robertson D, Williams SC, Murphy DG. (2010 ) Describing the brain in autism in five dimensions–magnetic resonance imaging-assisted diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder using a multiparameter classification approach. Journal of Neuroscience. 11;30(32):10612-23.

Malaspina D, Harlap S, Fennig S, Heiman D, Nahon D, Feldman D, Susser ES. (2001) Advancing paternal age and the risk of schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(4):361-7.

Reichenberg A, Gross R, Weiser M, Bresnahan M, Silverman J, Harlap S, Rabinowitz J, Shulman C, Malaspina D, Lubin G, Knobler HY, Davidson M, Susser E. (2006) Advancing paternal age and autism. Archives of General Psychiatry. 63(9):1026-32.

Sandin S, Hultman CM, Kolevzon A, Gross R, MacCabe JH, Reichenberg A. (2012) Advancing maternal age is associated with increasing risk for autism: a review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 51(5):477-486.

Durkin MS, Maenner MJ, Newschaffer CJ, Lee LC, Cunniff CM, Daniels JL, Kirby RS, Leavitt L, Miller L, Zahorodny W, Schieve LA. (2008) Advanced parental age and the risk of autism spectrum disorder. American Journal of Epidemiology. 168(11):1268-76.

Happy New Year

2015

(Apologies to subscribers who have seen this post before, I posted it by mistake in December when I only meant to schedule it ….doh!)

New year’s is a time for reflection on the past and the future. My new year’s resolution this time last year was to get around to putting down my thoughts on motherhood and spreading some of the fascinating stuff that I experience and learn about in my unique job. I thought maybe I would run out of things to write about, but on the contrary great research is coming out all the time and it’s more a lack of time to tell you about it that is a hindrance, what with work (albeit part-time) and the children keeping me busy!

Like Professor Lumby who came to tell my department about her research into childhood depression and how predictive factors were present at age 3 years (yes, I did not miss a “1” in front of the “3”, I do actually mean 3 years), like the whole raft of work that Professor Plomin (who works in the same building as me and with whom I co-authored a paper a while back) has done on intelligence, the current thinking behind the “explosion” in numbers of autistic children – from the mouth of Professor Michael Rutter (credited as being the founding father of Child Psychiatry and still to be found knocking around my department despite being an octogenarian), and the tranche of work of particular interest to me, the feminist, by my colleague at Imperial College Dr Ramanchandri on the important role of Fathers. All this as well as the tales and funny things that happen with or come out of the mouths of my babes!

If you found me over the last year, I’m so grateful for your visits. If you like what you read, please tell others about it as I really hope to be able to continue! You can also help by “Liking” and/or following my site and/or my Facebook page at Shrinkgrowskids.

Here are some of the most widely read posts from the last year. Hope you will carry on visiting in 2015!

Love
All You Need is Love

Social hierarchy
Social Hierarchy in 4 Year Olds

gender
Why I Hate Raising Boys

tigger
The Battle Hum of the Tigger Mum

Planes ADHD
What is ADHD?

Exploding the myth of Santa

Wind-up santa

I was not brought up to believe in Santa. Being from Taiwan, Christianity and Christmas were not as prevalent as in the West. Once we moved to the UK, my family joined in with the festive spirit with a plastic tree (Made in Taiwan) and a large meal (non-turkey Chinese food), but we never had stockings and Santa never visited. Once or twice, I remember wishing on a star on Christmas Eve that Santa was real and that we would get presents from Santa, but it never happened.

As teenagers, my sisters and I even had a bet that my mother didn’t know what the festival of Christmas was celebrating. We were right, my poor mother put on the spot muttered something about Jesus on a cross, to which there were many peals of laughter and shrieks of “That’s Easter!”. This Christian festival confusion amongst the Chinese may explain why one time in Hong Kong I saw a Christmas decoration being sold at a market stall that depicted a cheerful Santa Claus figure on the crucifix…quite bizarre to say the least!

Remembering my Santa-less childhood, I was quite certain that my kids would have the full Santa experience. Letters would be written and posted, mince pies and carrots would be left out at the fire place (and duly consumed leaving a designer sprinkling of crumbs), stockings would be filled and gifts delivered under the tree. When Big Sis was almost 2, she had requested a new play kitchen from Santa. As we were celebrating Christmas with grandparents in France, and were not lugging a wooden play stove and sink unit on the plane, we recorded video footage of Santa (who bore more than a striking resemblance to Banker) delivering her kitchen to our flat to be played to her on Christmas day so that she knew that Santa had delivered it! Santa’s wrapping paper was always bought separately and hidden lest a clever brain wonder why Santa has the same wrapping paper as Mummy and the whole Santa build up would be flawless with meticulous attention to detail. I have even gone so far as to shake bells gently next to the sleeping heads of my children on Christmas Eve so they may subliminally hear Santa’s sleigh bells in their sleep. I’m so sad, I know.

In all honesty though, the upside of the myth of Santa is so great, I can’t see why people complain about him and the commercialisation of Christmas. Without Santa and the Easter Bunny, I don’t know how I’d get my children to eat their greens, stop having tantrums and generally behave themselves. The threat of “Santa/ Easter Bunny is watching” is enough to stop my kids, in their tracks and reconsider their actions. Coca-Cola, Clintons and Americans in general should be given a medal from all parents in my book for the invention and popularisation of these characters as the good behaviour of my children from October to March is basically down to these two characters. If only someone could invent a fictitious character for the summer months, then the calendar year could be covered.

However, now that Big Sis is seven, I am beginning to wonder when the penny will drop. I have heard varying ages for the “Santa realisation” moment, ranging from 5 to 10 years. Some of Big Sis’s friends are already “non-believers”, but given that earlier this year I overheard Big Sis and Lil Bro having an existential conversation regarding Harry Potter, God and Santa, and coming to their own conclusion that only Santa was real as they had received physical presents from him, I’m reckoning on belief still going strong. I’m starting to worry though about Big Sis’s cognitive capacity if at the age of 7 years she can continue to believe that some old geezer can fly around the world delivering presents to all the children in the world overnight. I suppose though, that it is only slightly less plausible than the entire adult world telling her consistent lies and making her write and post letters and leave food out for non-existent people and sneaking around behind her back. Maybe I should be grateful that she finds it more plausible that Santa is real than that her mother is deceitful. Maybe I’m just too good at “being Santa”.

That is until now. In my old age, I am getting sloppy. Lil Bro asked for a watch from Santa for Christmas and I ordered it off Amazon to be sent to Banker’s office. He duly brought it home and showed it to me and left it on the coffee table. I went to bed forgetting to put it away. The next morning, remembering my mistake, I rushed downstairs, snatched up the watch and hid it. The kids, as always were up before me and were having breakfast with their father. Throughout the day, no one mentioned the watch so I thought I had got away with it. Then, the next morning Big Sis out of nowhere says “It was very strange, yesterday Lil Bro and I saw a watch on the coffee table. Then it disappeared.”

“Hmpff” I said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

I will repackage the watch and hope for the best, but I think my cover may be blown. I thought about returning the watch and swapping it for another one, but maybe this is how all cons fail, myths explode, truths get outed; the inevitable slip-up made from complacency over time. And maybe it’s time that Big Sis realises the truth, and I realise that we can’t hang on to our children forever. At some stage they wise up for better or for worse.

We’ll see what happens…

Does your school Nativity role predict your future life chances?

Nativity

As parents the world over are turning tea towels into head gear for shepherds and scampering to source angel’s wings for their children’s star turns in Nativity plays, here’s something that might make you think.

Once, before I had my own kids I mentioned to my then Professor (a world class Child Psychiatrist) that my niece had just been selected for the second year running to play “Mary” in the school nativity. “Well” she said “That’s it then, she’s bound for greatness with a start in life like that!” It was a joke of course, but it did make me wonder if there was any truth in this. Does your infant school Nativity role predict your future life chances?

I myself was a Narrator and then a Wise Man in my own school nativities and looking back, I think this is quite apt for who and what I have become, so maybe I have an intrinsic bias to believing that there is some truth. But beyond that, I think that there is actually some scientific basis.

Firstly, the casting of the nativity school play is not a random process, but a choice made by a teacher who knows your child. The teacher will know the personality and developmental ability of your child and will be consciously or unconsciously using this knowledge to cast the play. As personality and ability show some stability over time and are strong predictors of future outcome, it would make sense that your role in the school nativity play has some predictive power over future outcome.

Lead roles will usually be given to “pro-social children”. A pro-social child is basically the opposite of an anti-social child, thus pro-social children are well-behaved, do as they are told, seek to get along with other people, and are polite and helpful. They are usually the class role models. Having pro-social children in the lead roles makes sense as it makes the teacher’s life easier if the children they are relying on to hold the play together can be relied upon to learn their lines, rehearse and critically, turn up on time on the day with their costume! Casting an anti-social child or an anxious child in the lead role is more of a risk as who knows what they will do on the day! The last thing you want is the lead role to burst into tears or have a strop on stage. Sometimes casting an anti-social or marginalised child in a lead role is used as an “intervention”, whereby in the act of instilling the responsibility and limelight of the lead role, the teacher hopes to turn around a troubled child or child lacking in self-esteem. In this circumstance the teacher will have done a lot of background work to ensure that the child is up to the challenge. This doesn’t tend to happen very often.

Depending on the version of the nativity play that is being produced, the “lead role” is variable. Traditionally the “lead roles” are that of Mary and Joseph. Sometimes Mary and or Joseph are required to say many lines and may even need to perform a solo song. In this instance, it is clear that not only does the child need to be pro-social, but they also need to be able to sing and crucially be able to perform in public confidently. Here, therefore you are already selecting for a pro-social, confident child with the cognitive ability to memorise song lyrics, dedication to rehearse, low anxiety levels and likely extrovert nature. These personality factors are likely to be important in predicting future occupation and “success” outcome.

In some versions of the nativity play, Mary and Joseph are diminutive characters that take centre stage, but say very little with the majority of the speaking roles given to narrators who will tell the story. In plays like this, the Mary and Joseph characters are still prized, but the qualities required then are somewhat different. These roles tend to still go to prosocial types; children who are well behaved, look good and are well-liked by others, but are more likely to be anxious about speaking in public; as the extrovert, confident children will be reserved for the speaking roles.

Casting is additionally influenced by personality fit with the available parts. Which teacher could have resisted casting my bespectacled, Chinese, 5-year old self with a penchant for maths as a “Wise Man”? Blondes are more frequently cast as the Angel Gabriel. “Good sports”, “the class clowns” are more frequently cast as the donkey (as others may object to this role and turn it down).

Big Sis is following in my footsteps as narrator in her school nativity. I’m over the moon, not because she may end up as a doctor, but because I don’t need to make a costume.

Hurrah!

Please let me know your previous nativity roles and how you have turned out. It would be really interesting to see if there is truth to any of this!

Shrink Wrap!

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The kids and I had a great afternoon recently with our friends at Wrapsody Gift Wrapping Service making bespoke wrapping paper. No, this is not a sponsored post just two friends getting together to do something crafty with their kids. If you have a spare hour to kill, here’s a great art activity which will save you money in the run up to Christmas, looks good and is great fun!

Step 1. Making a snowflake. Fold a piece of scrap paper into half, then quarters. Fold this again into half, but this time diagonally so you end up with a triangle shape. Get your children to draw some shapes in the triangle shape to resemble a snowflake if possible, but any shape is fine.

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Cut out the shapes preserving the main integrity of the cone shape so as to preserve the paper in one piece, albeit with patterns cut out of it.

Step 2. Open it out. Kids love this part.

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Step 3. Sticking down the templates. Spread a sheet of cheap brown paper on the floor over newspaper and use blue tac to stick down all the snowflake cut outs on to the paper. Lay them out in an irregular formation.

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Step 4: Now for the fun bit. Use a spray paint (£6.50 for a large can that can spray reams and reams of paper – available from any art shop) in white, silver or gold and spray all over! It doesn’t matter if the spray is uneven, it adds to the effect.

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Step 5. Leave the paint to dry. Then peel off the paper snowflakes!

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Step 6. Et Voila, beautiful, original, hand-crafted wrapping paper. So fool-proof even children can make it.  Ready to make Christmas gifts look just lovely!

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Present

 

 

Happy Christmas Making!

 

 

 

What’s the problem with maths?

Maths

I know, I know, it’s so cliché. Another Chinese nerd banging on about boring maths. Believe me; I have fought hard to escape this stereotype. Banker and I didn’t get off to a good start as when we first met as students he guessed that I was a maths student. Maths meant to me geeky Asian with no social skills, so I wasn’t much impressed.

However, now as an adult in the working world I am thankful for my maths skills and am only regretful that they are not better. As a mother, I positively lament the lack of emphasis on maths in the infant school curriculum and I think that this is of detriment to our children and indeed our country. Britain has produced some of the world’s best scientists, engineers and economists so it is not for want of genetic stock or tradition. Yet why does the Far East continue to dominate the international student abilities (Pisa Test) League tables for maths and science? Nosing around Russell Group Universities, I found a higher proportion of Asians lurking in the corridors of Maths, Engineering and Science departments than in the Humanities departments. Why?

From my own up-bringing which I may be erroneously extrapolating to the rest of Asia, education is extremely highly valued. Within that, maths and science is valued above other subjects. So much so that my parents dictated to my sisters and me that we had to limit our A-Levels to 3 of: Maths, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Despite having achieved better marks in Art and History at GCSE than science, I was to be a scientist. Mad and maddening maybe, but my parents had seen a national focus on science, maths and engineering education allow their country (Taiwan) to gain economic wealth, and unprecedented development within their lifetime. On the backs of engineers, Taiwan is now a developed country and a world player in technology, despite being the size of Wales and having started in the 1940s from a much more disadvantaged base.

From a cultural origin of mathematical reverence it is quite bizarre to experience the irreverence to maths in the UK. Whilst an engineer is admired in the Far East, they are depicted as “Anoraks” in the UK. Whilst maths is a subject that both boys and girls are expected to excel in, maths in the UK is for boys, and even then – just for the boys who are born with “that logical, mathematical mind”. Whilst inability to do mental arithmetic is associated with derision and sympathy in the Far East, it is expected, sometimes even boasted about in the UK. I was shocked to find that many fellow well-educated mums were openly admitting that they would struggle to help their children with 11+ maths revision. The reason they were openly admitting this was because they were somewhat proud and not the least bit ashamed to be weak at maths, whereas I doubt anyone would openly admit to struggling to read or write at the level of an 11 year old. This would be regarded as shameful. It has become socially acceptable among the well-educated to be bad at maths. Surely this should not be?

Whilst reading is heavily pushed in infant schools, maths seems to be relatively neglected. In the UK reading and debating is cool. Law and politics is aspirational. PPE at Oxford is the Holy Grail. I have no problem with that, but why does it have to be at the detriment of maths and science? If we are a country that believes that children should be allowed to flourish and become what they want to be, doesn’t this include parity of encouragement for numeracy and literacy so that there is a level playing field of areas within which to flourish?

From a basis of low National aspiration in mathematical ability, it is no wonder that Banker states that the majority of banks are recruiting their quantitative skills staff from Asia. These skills are so sought after that my sister (who possesses a maths PhD) had no problem acquiring a highly paid job within 2 weeks of arriving back from the USA after deciding to return to the UK to be a more present Auntie. I am sure she would have found it harder to find a highly paid job had her PhD been in English Literature/ Greek Philosophy/ Viking History. At the population level one wonders whether the average Joe and Joan Blogs could calculate their expected monthly increase in mortgage repayment if the Bank of England were to increase interest rates by .5%. Yet these sorts of calculations are vitally important to keep roofs over heads and food in mouths. Maths is a vital and sought after skill, why are we not investing in it at the very grass roots?

Probably it is because the people in power don’t value or understand maths and science. Shockingly only 1 MP out of 650 has a background as a primary science worker as reported by The Guardian, and headlines of “Only scientist in Commons alarmed at MPs ignorance [about science]” in The Independent say it all. Only 70 out of 650 MPs are even registered as having “an interest” in science at all (reference here). That’s probably less than the number of MPs who are actively writing history books alongside their Parliamentary careers. I am a great supporter of the arts, but am also a strong believer that the basic level of maths and science needs to be raised and society can change this. As a social observer I see that a culture that values maths produces a society with strong mathematical ability. As a psychiatrist I know that “intelligence” is more likely to have a uniform rather than varied profile (so most children who are good at English should be as good at maths). Children with a varied profile are more likely to encounter difficulty and see a Child Psychiatrist, but over the general population they are a minority. As a researcher in behavioural genetics, I know that “g” (geneticist’s annotation for genetic “intelligence”) is generalist meaning that it applies across the board for all areas of intelligence and children who are genetically advantaged in English are also genetically advantaged in maths. Specialism or differentiation on the other hand is environmentally mediated (Kovas et al 2007). This means that in general, whether an intelligent child chooses to specialize in maths or English is due to its environment (parents, school, society); and even more crucially, where a child performs well in English but does less well in maths, this is also due to the environment (parent, school, society).

Back in the Shrink household. Big Sis’s state primary school pushes reading. So they should. All parents are expected to read with their children every night. The school challenged Big Sis at reading so much so that in Reception she was given “chapter books” to take home for her to read to me. At 5 and a half she was expected to read books containing the word “obsessed”. She could read the word but had no clue what it meant nor was she able to understand it when I tried to explain it to her. Big Sis began to hate reading and cried every night when I asked her to read to me. I persisted in thinking “if her teacher has given her this book, she must be capable of reading it”. After a few weeks of this, I gave up and thankfully went with my own judgement that these books were frankly too hard. I must be the only “Chinese Tiger Parent” to have written to the class teacher to say “Excuse me, but I think that you are over-estimating my child’s ability, can you put her reading books down 3 levels please”.  At the same time, while we parents were expected to battle to help children achieve advanced literacy, there was no expectation on us to do any numeracy with our children regularly. I don’t blame the school (it’s a great school), it’s not in the National Curriculum, no state school that I know in the UK encourages numeracy in this way, but I am pretty sure it happens in the Far East.

When I received Big Sis’s report card from Reception, she achieved “exceeding” scores in literacy but achieved “expected” scores for maths. My initial response was “How is this possible? She comes from a family of scientists and mathematicians! Maths is a family tradition.” Truth be told, I would have been happier with “expected” scores for literacy. To make matters worse, when I asked Big Sis if she was struggling with maths, she said “Maths is too hard. Maths is for boys”!

Rather than accept that “maths is hard, and she has not been born with a mathematical mind (she is a girl after all)” I set about setting Big Sis a few counting and maths problems every morning, to balance the reading that was set by the school every night. My view was that of course Big Sis’s literacy was better than her numeracy – I was required by the school to support her literacy on a daily basis but not required at all to support her numeracy. Since then, Big Sis’s maths has come along and she was rated of equal ability in maths and literacy by the end of Year 1. She will now confidently say “I am good at maths”, and attempt maths problems rather than avoid them. The solution was so simple, yet why are schools not breaking down maths to simple parts and pushing numeracy in line with literacy from reception? I’m not talking about solving quadratic equations, but if children are encouraged to count and add sweets/ pocket money/ count the number of days until Christmas etc. daily from a young age, does this not take the “difficulty” stigma out of maths?

I have found that the majority of children enjoy doing the things that they are good at. Some children are naturally good at certain things (Lil Bro is maths minded and will seek out for himself mathematical problems; he was a voracious consumer of jigsaws), however this is rarer and the majority of children become good at things. Once a child is good at something, then they will invest in doing these things and become even better at them. By the time that the National Curriculum suggests that children start doing the core of maths, their expertise and skill in literacy is far ahead of their mathematical ability. At one stage Big Sis was reading Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mr Fox” at school but did not know what 2 x 2 was- to me this seems completely unbalanced. Literacy and English become the favoured subjects and maths will be relatively challenging and therefore more unloved.  The opportunity to sell maths to children is hijacked by literacy being given the advantage of earlier exposure and active encouragement. In the Far East, 5-6 year old children will learn their times tables up to 12 by rote. Before you utter “We in the UK are not rote learners”, think about the reception classes up and down the land chanting their jolly phonics sounds “igh, igh, igh”; “Ph”, “Ph”, “Ph”; “ee”, “ee”, “ee”; “ai”, “ai”, “ai”. This is rote learning as who could fathom that “igh” is pronounced “i”?? Once the connections are entrenched by rote learning, it is possible to learn about the Latin and Greek from which words are derived, in the same way the meaning of relationships between numbers can be learnt. The rote learning gets you started.

I am pretty sure that had I not taken action to support Big Sis’s maths in the same way that I was required to support her literacy that Big Sis would not now confidently declare that she was “good at maths”. Without a sound understanding of maths, the enjoyment of the sciences would be in jeopardy. Isn’t it time that we put numeracy on equal footing to literacy in early years education, as only then can we really say that we are allowing our children equal opportunity to select for themselves their strengths be it science or the humanities?

References:

The Genetic and Environmental Origins of Learning Abilities and Disabilities in the Early School Years. Yulia Kovas, Claire Haworth, Philip Dale & Robert Plomin. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial no.288, vol 72, no.3, 2007.

All You Need is Love

Love

Simple isn’t it?

Cheesy as it is, I believe in this; so much so that this was the song that was played as my husband and I exited the church at our wedding. But if love is all you need, then in terms of parenting how and why do we sometimes get it wrong?

I think that sometimes people forget that “love” is like money; it’s no good in theoretical or inaccessible form. Having a million pound Trust Fund accessible when you reach the age of 85 years is not of much use to anyone; ultimately you need to be able to FEEL the power of it for it to have value. In my line of work, almost all parents will say that they love their children and I believe this to be true. However, the percentage of children that FEEL that their parents love them is way lower. It is therefore one thing to love your children. It is another to make them believe/ feel in their hearts/ know to the core/ have no doubt of the fact that they are loved. The former can be done from the office or at the kitchen sink; the latter is much harder work.

Knowing that you are loved/ lovable is at the core of our function. In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for depression in both adolescents and adults, when we search back with clients for “core negative beliefs” (the fundamental cognitive processing bias in people with depression), it is amazing how predictable and limited the core beliefs are that cripple so many good people; the most common being “I am not good enough/ I am unlovable”.

When are these core beliefs formed?

In early childhood.

Who/ what contributes to the formation of these core beliefs?

Parents.

I think that sometimes parents get confused about love. They confuse it with something that needs to be earned, won or is conditional. They think that unconditional love is excessive; an extravagance that will “spoil” children, denying it may be a motivator. They, and in turn their children come to believe that achievement (or something that they need to be or do) leads to love. Many great and successful people have grown up believing this model. It makes sense that achievement leads to “being worthy of love” and self-esteem is built on achievement and love. Many people are driven to success with a desire to “make their parents proud”.

Love Model 1

But there is a second model where a fundamental core of love (unconditional and for no reason other than being) can lead to self-esteem in its own right and this self-esteem on a basis of love can drive achievement all on its own. The unconditional love and support of parents is commonplace in acceptance speeches for awards of all kinds from Nobel prizes to Oscars.

Love Model 2

This second model is infinitely stronger than the first model presented. In the first model if love is dependent on achievement, it can be a very bitter pill to swallow if achievements wane and self-esteem and love (which was built on the rocky foundation of achievement) is lost, leaving people in effect stripped of everything. Some parents of course will never be proud of their children, they don’t have it in them and people are left chasing a dream. This type of model can explain how many successful and amazing people can feel they have nothing or are perpetually “not good enough”. In the second model, even if achievements wane and the self-esteem is dented, love is untouched and the source of everything lives on.

Making some one feel loved is hard work, but for parents I think it is important to stress that the effort in love is front loaded. Just as at the start of a new romance you might abandon the grey bloomers for lingerie, refrain from passing wind, frequently ask about your new partner’s day, always go on holiday together, so “romancing” (putting extra elbow grease into making someone feel loved and special) your child is also required at the start. Once a secure loving relationship is established, then inevitable liberties will be taken, but if the work of the early years has been solid, then nothing can shake the secure foundations of love.

As I mentioned I am a great believer of the fundamental importance of love and with regard to my own children I am operating on the basis of the second model. I want my and my husband’s love to be the fuel for our children’s success (or failure, we will love them anyway). As a parent it is difficult to know “How to make children feel loved”, and believe it or not this is not a topic covered at medical school, in a psychology degree or psychiatric training. There is no scientific basis and don’t let any pseudo-science, pop-psychology book tell you otherwise. We as parents are all left to figure this out for ourselves and enact in the best way that we can. The things I figure are listed below:

1) Cuddles are good. Surely nothing says love as much as kisses and cuddles? Sod the Victorians and stiff upper lips, I’m for open affection. Often.

2) Laughing is good. What says “love” more than enjoying each other’s company? One of the vows I made when I worked full-time was that I would laugh with my children every day, and we did, and we still do.

3) Being there is good. I know that I can’t always be there for my children but I make sure that I (or my husband) am there every time it matters. School plays, sports days, class assemblies, concerts and parents’ days – we haven’t yet missed one. I wave like a frantic loon to ensure that they KNOW I am there. Embarrassing I know, but why take time off work to go if they don’t even know I made it…?

4) Being really there is better. It can’t be right just to show your face on the special occasions, part of “love” is about sharing the mundane. Being around at least some of the time to catch the joke, the thought, the upset in real time. Some things are lost in the re-telling. You can love from a distance but can you make someone FEEL loved without really spending much time with them?

5) Understanding matters. What says love more than knowing what the other person is thinking? I often finish Banker’s sentences; I can do this with the children now too. Talking about, listening and exchanging experiences and feelings regularly is the basis of being able to know and understand someone. Children’s experiences and feelings are just as significant as adult experiences even if they might seem less important. A child being told off by a teacher will hurt as much to them as an adult being told off by their boss.

6) Respect matters. I don’t think you can engender love without respect. This means listening and valuing your children’s opinions, even if they are wrong and never denigrating or humiliating them.

7) Saying it out loud matters. I am a big believer of the three words “I love you”. I think it is necessary even if it is not sufficient. Banker is shy of these words but if you want to engender unquestionable love why hold back? Go the whole hog. Say it every day, 5, 10, 20 times a day if you like – contrary to popular belief if you say it continually to the same people, the power is not diluted. At this age, children may not always understand nuance and behaviour and verbalising your emotions and intentions help to bring things home. Once after telling off Lil Bro, he cried and said “You don’t love me anymore”. Since then I have been extra good at verbalising and spelling it out:

“I will love you if you are clever, I will love you if you are not, I will love you if you are fat, I will love you if you are thin. I will love you if you are nice to me. I will love you even if you are horrible to me. Even when I am shouting at you, I love you. I love you for being you. You will always be beautiful and smart in my eyes. I am proud of you for being you. You will always have my support. I am always here for you. Nothing will change that. I love you.”

For an adult it comes across a bit stalker-ish I know, but for young children it’s good and clear (I hope).

This is by no means a correct or exhaustive list and until Big Sis and Lil Bro are adults, I will have no idea whether my list is effective at all. My consolation is that given that my intentions are blogged, they cannot say I didn’t think about this, and if I failed to let my love be truly felt, they will know that I failed trying.

Confessions of a BME Oxbridge Female

whites only

I’VE BEEN MENTIONED IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES!

In Simon Kuper’s article in the Financial Times October 24th 2014 “Confessions of a white Oxbridge male” he mentions me in his concluding paragraph:

“We [white Oxbridge males] have expanded our caste a little. We now recruit some non-whites (preferably Oxbridge men). We’ve even begun admitting Oxbridge women. We just sideline them professionally the moment they make the mistake of giving birth.”

OK, not quite a name-check, but I’m one of the women he is talking about. Since he has given his career confessional (which he says included an easy ride into Oxbridge and journalism); I thought I’d give a view from the other side. No one may be interested, as who wants to hear a BME (black/ minority ethnic) females’ voice when they can hear the voice of the white male, but it saves me a lot of money in therapy.

Unlike Simon’s dad, my dad was no Cambridge educated establishment figure. He was born son to a peasant farmer in 1940s Taiwan. Taiwan in the 1940s bears no resemblance to the bustling developed country it is today, and had a predominantly agricultural economy. Life for a subsistence farmer was hard and tied to the will of the weather. Growing up, we were forever regaled with my father’s hard-luck story. If we ever complained about having to go to school, we would get lectured about “You’re so lucky you can go to school. When I was young I had to plead with my mother to go to school, then I had to walk 10 miles round trip to school barefoot wearing my father’s cut off trousers, feet calloused and bleeding.” We would then mercilessly make fun of it in the manner of the Monty Python 4 Yorkshire-men skit by adding “That’s nothing, when I was a lad, I had to crawl naked on my hands and knees through dark underground tunnels to get to school”, etc. etc.

At the heart of it though, and particularly in adulthood, I truly respect the climb he made to give us, his children a better life. He was the 5th of 11 children. None of his preceding siblings had completed primary school education, and they were forced to enter child labour at a nearby factory where they were physically and verbally abused on a daily basis. On finding that he was to suffer the same fate, he cried until a neighbour took pity on him. This neighbour, having heard from her daughter that my father was the brightest child in the class, persuaded my grandmother to allow him to enrol for secondary education, just for a year at least. The pattern continued with ever more cycles of crying and pleading “Just one more year of school”, until my grandmother eventually realised that all this crying and intellectual sentimentality probably made him too soft for factory work. So they let him continue with education and work in the evenings and holidays in repayment for not shouldering the family’s load. In term time, as his school was far away, he sofa-surfed and freeloaded on classmates from richer families to get by until eventually, he made his way up to University to study civil engineering. On graduation he landed a job as a hydraulic engineer in one of Taiwan’s harbours thus having successfully climbed out of manual labour into the professional class through hard-won education.

Having worked 10 years as an engineer and saved hard, he followed his dream: he applied for a PhD in civil engineering at Swansea University in the UK. That’s how my family immigrated to the UK. I was 3 years old at the time. Compared to the life that my father had, my life has been charmed. A family of 5 was frugally but happily fed and watered on a PhD stipend. My sisters and I had no toys but made chess sets from the cardboard of a cereal packet. We avidly read Enid Blyton books and cuddled bears purchased from the second hand stall at the school fete. We begged our friends to share their penny sweets and chocolates with us. We learnt that material things did not matter, we had the most important gift of all: A LOVING FAMILY.

My father whose life experience was of class discrimination in Taiwan and racial discrimination in the UK also passed on another life lesson: you will face discrimination, but if you work twice as hard as the others, you will succeed, don’t let anyone stop you. We took his advice, and for a while, nothing stopped me.

With this work-ethic instilled, school was a breeze; we went to the local state primary schools as my parents couldn’t afford anything else. Without the seemingly now obligatory tuition, my sisters and I all waltzed into the local Grammar school which saw 1000 girls sitting for 90 places. A clean sweep of As (A* was not around at that time) in 10 GCSEs, 1 AS-level and 3 A-levels, saw me arrive at Cambridge University to study medicine. Whad’ya know? My dad was right – unstoppable.

A funny thing happened at Cambridge. As soon as I arrived, the porters and students all commented on my good English. Initially, I took great offence at this: how else did they think I got all those As at A-level to get here? Later I realised that in my college undergraduate intake of 120 that year, I was the only BME girl who was not a foreign student. Everyone just presumed that I was a foreign student and were hence surprised at my grasp of the English language. Russell Group Universities routinely bump up their atrocious record on BME admissions by admitting BME fee-paying foreign students. These same “cash cows” that aid University BME stats are also paraded in all University promotional material. One of my best friends, a mixed race foreign student who was the only black student in my college year, always made it front and centre in the college prospectus.

This memory came back to me as I read Simon Kuper’s article and I began to do some research in this area. For the period covering my time at Cambridge in the mid-90s, statistics show that of Home students (non-foreign students) 50% of admissions came from state schools, 40% were female and 5% were ethnic minority. If you do the maths, this makes me one of the 1% of the Home University students that was a BME, state school female; or to really put this in perspective, I was 1 of 30 in the entire year at the University *. If only I was lesbian, then I would have been one of three!

Thankfully in my day, there were no tuition fees. Even so, although my parents were now earning good incomes, their income was such that I was still eligible for means-tested hardship funds at Cambridge and I took these as well as student loans. Although I did not work in term time (which is forbidden at Cambridge due to the rigour of the courses), I worked every Christmas and summer holiday; initially for minimum wage at a dry cleaners, and then realising that I had more potential than this, at twice minimum wage as a medical secretary. This afforded me the extravagance of May Balls and to travel myself interesting (Eastern Europe, New York, San Francisco, Cape Town).

Despite being accused at times of “only having been accepted at Cambridge because I was a BME female” a cheap jibe from the threatened, I knew that my grades matched those of the privately educated white males, and I graduated with a 2:1, the same as the majority of the white males. I took a University academic prize with me and took up employment at the best clinical and academic centre in Europe for my medical specialty.

Interestingly, having Cambridge on my CV suddenly meant that people assumed I had a privileged upbringing. A senior colleague once told me to accept a colleague’s arrogance by saying “you can’t be too hard on him because he came from a poor background, he had to work through medical school, he didn’t come from a privileged background like us”. I didn’t think it appropriate to buy sympathy and bring up my summers and winters sorting out the shirts of Japanese business men. At a dinner party with a Professor of Economics at a leading University, he bemoaned the number of foreign Chinese PhD students at his University who came from rich families and expected to be “spoon-fed” their degrees. He asked how my family came to the UK, and I said “My Dad came to do a PhD”. He immediately gave me a scornful look that said “Oh – you are the spawn of one of them”. It didn’t seem apt to say – “but he got there through sheer hard work having worked 10 years to support himself to get a place there”. At an appraisal, I was once told that I “had a reputation for being forthright and assertive”. I meant to cry out “Do you think that people wait with baited breath to listen to what a BME female has to say?” but I didn’t. He followed it up with “We British don’t like it.” I presumed he was excluding me from being British due to some sort of apartheid era definition where “Britishness” was coded in skin colour, as my family and I have lived in Britain and held British passports for 30 years. I meant to respond, but I didn’t.

People that didn’t know I had been to Cambridge continued to mistake me for the nanny/ maid/ cleaner. I mean to correct them, but I don’t.

The reason being that this stuff is like water off a duck’s back. Over years, the BME state school woman develops a skin as thick as a rhino. From the braying “Ching Chong China Man”, “Go back to your own country” taunts from the playground to the assumptions in the workplace that the reason you have made it is because you paid your way or were promoted in an affirmative action. It may have knocked me back but it has never stopped me going where I wanted to go.

What did stop me?

Wanting to work part-time**.

Apparently, this is impossible.

Not only in medicine, but my female Oxbridge friends in law, media, finance and other competitive jobs say the same thing. As much as I hate to admit it, a white Oxbridge male is right again, and by the time we’ve had the second child, we’re well and truly side-lined. While I doubt it is beyond the wit of man to operationalise part-time/ flexible working in high income jobs, it is currently beyond the will of man: the white Oxbridge man.

So I set a challenge for my husband, a white Oxbridge male, my friends and former classmates who will inevitably inherit the mantle of white Oxbridge male power: use your power to effect change and equality for the women in your organisation – if not for your wives then for your daughters. For if your daughters become trapped in domesticity in later life; then they need only look in their white Oxbridge fathers’ eyes for culpability.

References:

Statistics from House of Commons report on “Oxbridge “elitism”” by Paul Bolton. http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn00616.pdf

*this rough calculation is based on an approximate number of 3000 home admissions a year and on the distribution of females and state school candidates being similar within the BME admissions as within the University overall which may not necessarily be assumed.

**by part-time I really mean less than 4 days a week, as everyone knows employers are happy to negotiate a 4-day week where you subsume a full-time role for part-time pay.