This article is taken from the November 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
So Hector has now been at his senior school for nearly a term … and he’s taking it all in his standard, nonplussed, emotionally avoidant stride. Probably because I’m doing all the emotional labour behind the scenes. As per. Just meekly approaching Google Classroom burnout …
Actually, NOT meekly at all. God, I hate that thing. That portal to hell. Maybe we should have gone to the crunchy Montessori we looked at, with all the blackboards and screen-shaming, if only to avoid the dreaded “hub”.
I know, I’ve done it before. But with GIRLS. Who get it. Yes, sue me, I did say that. Admittedly, Minnie was boarding, so it was actually moot whether she got it or not. And sadly, funds no longer allow for us to ship Hector off. I mean, not sadly.
But also, you know what I mean. Even if funds did allow, I’m still scarred by having to go and rescue him from his residential in Ypres in Year 7. So no. Boarding was never on the cards.
But still, did we — after all those open days and private tours and “admissions criteria” — pick the right school? Was the place that stressed the importance of “the whole child” over exam results actually the right choice?
Were the design technology centre and swimming pool and rolling fields that caught his 12-year-old eye at that first open day really worth the hour drive we must suffer there and back every day?
Really? Suddenly not so sure. Then again, they do have llamas. And A-list actors doing the school run. Which pupils are welcome to groom if they need a break — the llamas, not the actors. So that’s one up on the “rescue snakes” that Highgate keeps in the science labs (true story).
Meanwhile Lyra is now fully ensconced at a well-known hot house (which shall remain nameless), where she’s being suitably frogmarched through GCSEs. K-Pop Demon Hunters obsession not withstanding.
Her primary concern is that she couldn’t focus on The Summer I Turned Pretty for more than one episode
Sidenote — is it weird that I find myself equally obsessed? You’d think so, but apparently I’m not alone. Something to do with the perimenopause, probably. Anyway.
Moving on to Minnie. Ah, my firstborn. Despite the freakishly normal GCSE results, we have the small matter of her now “self-identifying as ADHD”. Her symptoms? An inability to “focus” on her History of Art A-level (you and me both, babe) so-called forgetfulness (aka scrolling) and “relationship problems” (aka being a teenage girl).
But her primary concern is that over the holidays she couldn’t focus on The Summer I Turned Pretty for more than one episode.
When I suggested that this was more likely to be a problem with the show than her brain, and that she should try KPDH, my woke friend Tilly (retraining to be a therapist, of course) said I was undermining Minnie and “deflecting with humour”.
She also had a little dig at me for “always being on my phone” in front of the kids. Er, Hello! Have you ever tried to stay on top of Google Classroom/Year 9 homework for a clueless 13-year-old boy, Tilly?
Didn’t think so.
So now, in my guilt at having potentially missed something, I’ve booked Minnie in to see a wildly expensive psychiatrist in Belgravia, who Minnie’s friend Lucia’s mother says is “lovely”. So we have that to look forward to as a little Christmas treat. Meanwhile, I’ve now got to order £5,000 worth of Sephora and Lego Technic to the house in the Cotswolds where we’re booked in for Christmas with Will’s siblings and parents. Yay. Not.
