The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep51: Molly Oldfield on tricky school starts

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

What happens when your little one's happy to start school - for a day or two, then isn't having any of it? Listen as Molly Oldfield, host of award-winning kids' podcast 'Everything Under The Sun' regales Annie and Wendy with her eldest's start at primary school, PLUS why having a room of one's own, is VITAL when it comes to WFH.

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary and I'm Wendy Gollage and together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments with guests who are far more interesting than we are. Welcome to another episode of Sweat, Snot and Tears. I hope you're all all right. I'm trying to think of fun news to share with you all. The biggest thing I can think of and trust me it's big the trampolines back we took it down when we moved but we noticed how much fun they had on other people's trampolines over the summer so it's back I'm staring at it now and it's so freaking ugly Wendy where is the

balance to be struck between living a life of niceness and actually sharing your home with children we have a trampoline it's huge it's ugly it's i can see it now my dog is underneath it having a poo actually that's nice oh my god oh it's all fun it's all fun so we have a playroom not not a Fifty Shades style playroom, a kids style playroom where I can shut the door. That would be a very different pod. And so my take on it is if you can throw it in the playroom and shut the door and not see it at the end of the day, I'm OK with that. But having said that, it's my eldest's 10th birthday. I know, double figures. Double figures.

We've been doing this shit for a decade. Well, and the trouble is the amount of shit that has now arrived in my house this morning via present form means I don't think it's going to fit in the goddamn playroom. What did she get? What did she get? Every single thing that's ever been made with Harry Potter on it. Ah, God. Legos, hoodies, books, wands, you name it. Harry Potter has invaded my house. house anyway they don't listen to

us Annie they really don't I know I just want to ask one more thing I hear your dad's there deconstructing a bed why oh it's a long story listeners so the short version is my littlest has got a very small bedroom and our friends gave us a cabin bed that they were getting rid of so we put up the cabin bed at great labor lots of swearing lots of fingers nearly a divorce all of those things um it's really high and she doesn't like it and she keeps wetting the bed because she can't get out in the night to have a wee poor little sausage and it makes her sad and now she's having nightmares and she won't go to bed so i've thrown money at the problem went to john lewis bought a bed and dad is taking down the offending cabin bed upstairs cue more swearing um so what bed has she got instead

just a really boring single bed is there going to be a day where she says i'm not scared of the cabin bed anymore mummy can you put it back she can beep beep beep beep beep beep off is what she can do amazing great well i'm glad to hear that your life is as chaotic and ridiculous as mine now i think we should put to all of our parenting questions to today's guest host of her her own Q&A pod for kids, Everything Under the Sun. And did you know she's to write the questions for QI? In fact, she wrote them for 12 years. Welcome, Molly Oldfield. How are you? Hello, I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're welcome. Anytime, anytime. Now, our first question, Molly. Yours.

Very serious question. Any sweat, snot or tears in your house this morning? No sweat, no snot, but a tear. Yours? Not mine, my son's. So I put a podcast out every Friday and I was just listening to it this morning, just making sure if I needed any edits.

And last week we had Stephen Fry on the podcast and he was talking about... Just casually drop that in. Just casually drop drop that in just had a friend called steve i feel like he lives here because we have the harry potter stories on so much it's literally like he lives in my downstairs loo and just narrates harry potter he's like a member of your family i wish he was we might all be a bit clever oh he's got such a soothing voice. So go on. The pod's tomorrow.

It was about the god Apollo. I mean, a little boy called Jack asked me, can, I don't know, why do all the Greek and Roman gods have different names for their gods except Apollo? And I was like, oh, they do? Okay. So I asked Stephen.

He did the answer. And then I ran a competition after it to win two copies of my new book of the podcast everything under the sun and in it I said to kids if you want to win a signed copy of the book send me think about the gods and think about their superpowers and send me your what you'd love to have as a superpower right so I was playing it to my son this morning because I thought he'd find it funny and they were saying things like hi I'm Amanda and I would like invisibility power and what Alex said I'm four and I would like to be

able to swim like a penguin so I can explore the oceans and then this little girl called Aureliana she said I'd like to be like a cheetah so that I could run really fast and not have to go in the car. And then my son started crying. And he said, I want cheetah superpower. And I was like, OK, OK, let's move swiftly on to the next. How old is he, Molly? He's four. So he really wants cheetah superpower.

So he got a bit upset about that one. I love how rational they are oh so rational but you've got a one-year-old as well haven't you so you're coming into the fully irrational batshit crazy two-year-old stage aren't you yeah he's crazy but he's quite chilled actually so long as like he's obsessed with watching helicopters taking off and landing on YouTube and diggers so he'll sit there just watching diggers have you been to dig a world or dig a land no called yet yeah I need to go to that with him he's gonna love that I'm glad I've got daughters no dig a world for you no dig a land for me now one of the

other first questions we like to ask our guess so we can see what kind of state of mind they're in or and have been in for the last 18 months how were your lockdowns oh um the first one was horrific um i mean that's a kind of a everyone agrees with that one so bad oh well i had like a quite young baby so he was born in october um and so you were pregnant no i wasn't pregnant because he'd just been born in october so he was like oh the october before the lockdown yeah so he was what like november december january five months and he was just terrible at sleeping and my older one decided to be terrible at sleeping too and everyone wanted to sleep pressed up next to me and i got like

serious like covid fear i think because of all the hormones and stuff of a new baby and i was just like wouldn't let them touch gates if we went for a walk didn't want them yeah i was just freaked and everybody around us was so mean and wouldn't talk to children or would just like run in opposite directions from each other we had a bit of that on walks actually i once even had a woman shout at me and say get away it's too dangerous for you to be here just go and walk my sister-in-law had that in the sea she got in the sea with her kids and this woman came up to her and goes you can't be in the sea the government says we're not allowed to be in the sea and she was like since when can i not be in my god doesn't salt water like kill everything i thought that's how the world worked oh that could be a question for you molly could oh can the sea kill covid yes steven will know yeah we'll ask him um yeah so it was rubbish but the next two were

actually fine because i wasn't so scared and my kids were well one of them could go to nursery which was really good yes we had much envy for the nursery yeah i was so happy about that and it was also really nice because then even though you had to line up in crosses two meters apart wearing a mask at least you could sort of wave at other mums and see some other humans which was nice so did anything good come out of it for you were there lasting happy memories um well we'd we were living in a rented cottage and we realized it was too flipping small and we managed to buy a house which we love now which was awesome that's pretty good that was really good got a trampoline as well in the garden now oh everyone's bloody got one yeah and then the

other really good thing was actually the podcast did really well because lots of kids were at home in lockdown and I think they really loved hearing each other's voices and I got some really nice coverage like it was in the um Sunday Times style like what's hot and it said like download now for homework hell you know homeschool hell uh and it was in the evening standard and the telegraph you won a very shiny award didn't you yeah i won yeah best family pod of the year bronze in the uh best family podcast show yeah the bridge podcast awards get you that's amazing yeah it was really really cool so yeah the podcast had a nice time i didn't make it in the first lockdown because i just couldn't but then once i got my head around the whole thing then I made it again and it was really great and I think it was nice for children

to yeah hear each other's voices when they're at home yes because they so weren't used to yeah they're normally used to fighting with 30 other voices in a very small room yeah suddenly they're all home with their parents now I've read that the question that sparked the pod was can blue whales speak to killer whales yes can you answer it please because i've been wondering that ever since i read that question one on the podcast and question one in the book and do you want me to read it to you please i'll just tell you because i know just tell me um so uh killer whales aren't actually whales. They're dolphins. Stop. Stop. Mind blown.

Are you serious? Yeah, they're the largest member of the dolphin family. So why do we call them whales? Because they got their confusing name hundreds of years ago when sailors saw them attacking whales and called them whale killers. And then that somehow got flipped around over time, you know, the way the language does, to killer whales. And yeah, but now you're not really meant to call them killer whales, you're meant to call them orcas.

So that was a bit less confusing, I guess. This is like a lesson. Wendy, we need to rethink our whole lives. So actually it's quite fun on the podcast because they say, this is a sound for killer whale, and it sounds obviously like a dolphin, you know, they make those sort of funny yeah exactly and blue whales have these like really deep slow songs that can travel for thousands of miles through the ocean so um i still said uh it would be a bit like if you tried

to talk to a sheep like you could try but they're not really going to understand what you're saying um although I actually said that exact thing at a talk for my for penguin random house for for the book and then Michael Morpurgo came up to me afterwards and he was like oh by the way sheep can talk and I was like really he said well every single book I've ever written I've got sheep at the end of my garden and I go down there and I read them my new books. And if they like it, then I know I'm onto something. But if they look bored, then I have to go back and give it a rewrite.

So it was quite sweet. That is an amazing anecdote. We're mildly Morpogo obsessed in our house. He's amazing, isn't he? So nice. He really is. And he's written so many books. I don't get how he has the time.

Well, how do you have the time, Molly? Really? Two kids. Yeah. Podcast. I hear there's a shed involved. I'm in my shed. Yeah, I have a shed in the garden. Are you in your shed now? I'm in my shed. She's looking in what looks to be a very glamorous location. So I don't believe it's a shed. It looks like a house. It's a shed. Look, well, I don't know if I can turn my computer screen.

See, there's the window. Oh, very nice window seat arrangement going on. So are kids allowed in the shed or is it a mum-only zone? Yeah, they're always in here. They've got this obsession with watching, like, Incy Wincy Spider and, like, songs on my computer screen while they, like, sit on the... We've got this, like, bed here, which people sometimes sleep in.

And they like to get really cosy in there and then watch all their favorite like things on my screen i think i'd like to do that yeah i mean it's very cozy i wrote half of my book with incy wincy spider on one screen half of the screen and then my word document on the other half of the screen mum tasking are you ever tempted to go lie in the bed when you should be working oh yeah i am do you do it tempted to do that and do you yeah of course i do that yeah but my worst sound is like thud thud thud which means one child is coming up the steps clonk the door opens and then in they come they're like can I do colour Lynn I want to do they love pressing the printer they just love trashing everything so do you have to do lots of re-recording bits because little people have appeared uh well when I'm recording the podcast

I make sure that like their dad or my grandma or we have a babysitter like I make sure that they're here and like holding them back for like 15 minutes while I'm doing the actual recording bit. Tying them up with skipping ropes. Yeah. That's exactly how Wendy and I approach this podcast. Yeah. So you're obviously around your kids a lot because you're working from your shed. Yeah.

And they're at the other end in the house. Yeah. But I was interested. I was reading today. So I don't know if anyone knows, but your dad is oldfield yeah tubular bells fame and he's famously said in the past that he feels like he didn't give you and your siblings the attention you always deserved are you trying consciously to parent in a different way or are you following your mum's lead was your mum always around like she was around tons when we were little because she also worked from home but then she did go and work at virgin records when i was about um seven so

actually after that she was at work every day uh but she'd be able to come back to like watch matches and stuff but i i loved her being at home i do remember being a bit sad when she went to work but then when i was older i loved her being at work like going to Virgin Records as a teenager and raiding the cupboard I mean it would just be Spice Girls like CDs t-shirts any kind of like merchandise plus would I constantly be going to gigs and the after parties and be like do you want to come and see Blur do you want to come and see Blur man you had the best teenage years my mum snuck me into the brit awards every year without a ticket i sat on lenny kravitz's lap next oh my god oh my goodness i know a series of 42 year old women who would like to sit on lenny kravitz's

lap even now i'm feeling a bit teary hearing that have you showered since i wouldn't have well it was really bad because it was the night before my A-levels. So I went in completely drunk to do my Spanish A-level and my friends were like, you kept making this weird sound the whole way through. I was apparently going like that. I didn't know what I was doing.

But like clearing my throat, trying to keep myself awake because I've been like out all night the night before. What grade did you get? I got, well, I got three A's and a B but I got B in Spanish so you could have had an A if you hadn't sat on Lenny I think you should sue Lenny Kravitz for my B yeah so yeah so no I had tons of fun from the fact that my mum worked and then my dad was always just working just obsessed always in the studio with the door quite close well We would go in there sometimes.

But yeah, I'm definitely 100% more available than he was. But my mum was very much around. But I like being here for them. Certainly where Annie and I are concerned, it's other parents who get us through the traumas of parenting, whether that be having to have a trampoline in your garden or whatever who's your go-to support gang um well i actually my husband is now working from home which is awesome that's helpful yeah because he used to go into the office like three or four days a week because he's a lawyer but now he's got this lovely little office which we call the woodshed but it's actually a

small slight tiny room which used to have logs in it by the previous owner but he's turned it into his own office which he luckily really likes and um yeah so he's here all the time which is really good not today he's in London but generally so he does all the shopping for food and he does loads of cooking and then we share the school run so I do a drop off and he does loads of cooking and then we share the school run so i do a drop off and he does a pickup um and then also we're just in the local village school which is two minutes drive away and outside it is this cafe and so every drop off and pick up there's just all the mums and some dads are there and i was saying the other day it's like university because every morning 9, after drop off,

just everyone's in there having coffee and chatting. And it's so nice. I want my kids to go to your school. There's just a grungy pub outside theirs. And it's thankfully shut at 9 in the morning. Thankfully shut. How do you drag yourself away to do any work? So what time do you stay there till in the morning then?

About 10. Oh, how nice. This is very civilised. Yeah. Shall I tell you something actually, guys? At my kids' old school in London, we've just moved to Oxford, the parents set up a cafe in the playground. Oh, well, there you go.

So you know. And it wasn't open every day, but every Friday, parents would staff it and you would stay. And we would stay there till like almost lunchtime, like eating biscuits and talking crap to each other it was very very civilized it is really nice because you do become each other's kind of they're the only people who really understand what you're going through aren't they other school parents yeah because it really is like kids exactly the same age and yeah they you know they're all stuck well for me my son only started school

10 days ago so it's been so bonding oh the first two days were great i mean i was like crying for the last two weeks of the holidays like sobbing it's a given oh i was so upset and then but then on the day he was so excited and like literally he got out the car and ran all the way across the village green and into school and was like hello i'm i'm all going to reception and he like cube barged his way in so i was like quite excited before him um first two days amazing then we had the weekend and then monday completely freaked out take me to a greek island i'm not going to school i think i'm related to him. So we've been watching this holiday programme with my grandma

and they'd gone to the island in Greece where they filmed Mamma Mia. So he's obsessed with it now and he just wants to go there. So he was like properly crying and then he got hysterical and he was just shouting, Greece, Greece, Greece. So we had to let him not go to school because we just couldn't get him to go. No, you're joking. Yeah, he didn't go we just couldn't get him to go no you're joking oh my goodness so then what what happened on tuesday well so luckily like our school's really sweet and they've the teacher mrs platt has gone around meeting all the new reception kids in their

house so she came she was due to come to us this afternoon in the afternoon that he didn't go to school so she came over and she chatted to him and also to me i really embarrassingly started crying on mrs platt who i'd never met before she'll have seen it all before don't worry but this is a pretty cool story keep going well i was freaking out because there was loads of covid in the school and so one of my friend's sons had covid and her younger daughter is in my son's class and they have the sibling policy it's probably the same at your school but if your siblings got covid you still have to go to school yeah and i was like so i'm sending my kid to school and he's gonna get covid and i'm not happy about this uh and in the end the little girl didn't go in because

she tested positive that morning so so did the whole family parents and everything so she didn't go in but i didn't know yet that she hadn't gone in so poor mrs platt had me like crying about covid crying about me my son starting school um and my husband was just so embarrassed he was like hiding around the corner going oh my god poor mrs platt like she just came round to see if arlo's like okay yeah mrs platt's had a tough week isn't she she was so nice she said well sit down next to me why don't you sit down and I'm like all right and then the next she was really nice and then the next morning at school she was like Arlo went running in again because he'd now shown Mrs Platt his bedroom and shown her around the house and stuff well that was quite a

good strategy then of the home visit yeah here's my room here's all my stuff and then uh she was on the gate now all the teachers always say and how are you and i'm like you're gonna be the mum that they all cock their head on one side hello arlo's mummy how are you it's really embarrassing oh dear oh well um so when you get together with a support gang is it always at the cafe or have you been out for parent drinks yet oh we haven't yet no um i did with my his like preschool we did that um but although it was covered so it's only right at the end but yeah no we haven't done that but we will oh i actually had a bouncy castle party on the first weekend of school starting. So they all came over.

They've all been over all the time. A bouncy castle party for grown-ups or for... Well, it was for kids, but it had a huge pink slide. So the grown-ups were on it a lot as well. I'm going to say, I think post two children, a bouncy castle party could get terribly wee if there's lots of bumps on it. It's a slide. It's fine.

You're not allowed to... You just slide down it. Yeah. And I always lower the tone i'm sorry right much more serious question molly how do you want to be remembered by your kids oh by my kids oh yeah um i'm not by a slot by them well just as their as their mum who they love and i guess someone who always felt like their greatest champion and like their home, you know. I always want them to be able to like, no matter what age they are, just like come home if they want to and just have someone to chat to. You're making me all wobbly because I'm feeling a bit wobbly because she's double figures anyway.

I hope she comes home. Never leave home. Never leave home. Oh no, home yeah never leave home never leave home oh no she can definitely leave home i'm currently living with my mum while our house is getting renovated she would say that that's a very overrated thing to want she looked at me this morning and said will i ever be rid of you wait but you're living with your mum or she's living with you no we're living with her while our house yeah yeah i mean for a cup of tea maybe a night but yeah yeah not with with my husband and two children in tow and it's coming up to a year oh she loves it not so much um so what's next for molly award-winning podcast books coming out of your ears. What's next? Stephen Foy on Speed, Del. Yeah.

I don't... You know, I would really like to make the podcast and book into a kids' TV show, a quiz show. I think it would be perfect. It's got to be slime involved. Always. I ran the idea over with my son this morning and he was just saying like well he was just really thinking about the slime a lot and how much he'd like to have a bucket of

slime on his head that's why that's as far as i've got a tv show with slime um yeah and just keep making the podcast uh for a bit and see what happens really we do have this ultimate dream uh which there's this really hippie school in bali okie dokie made out of bamboo i think there's a four-year-old who's gonna say well i want grease yeah he's like i don't want to go to bali i want to go to so seriously you might move the whole thing to Bali? Just maybe for a time or something. I don't know. I really want to.

Why the hell not? It's an amazing idea. I love it. Yeah. I'd like to. Okay, and now we've gone for the big questions. Now we're going for the really silly questions. What's for tea, Molly, and who's cooking?

My husband. Definitely, I'm really bad at cooking. He likes making chicken fajitas and stuff like that. We'll probably have that. Oh, I could go a fajita for lunch, actually. Now, Molly, last question. I want you to imagine that you're tucking Annie and I into bed. We are your children.

In that lovely bed in your shed, actually. Oh, you want to go there? Yeah, that's good. I've got my eye on that. But I can't sleep, Molly. So you've got to sing me your lullaby that you sing your boys when they can't sleep are you joking no i'm not off you pop come on well it's a bit weird because it's quite personal like my husband sometimes called used to call me huggle because i like hugs and so we called my baby bugle and we call the other one beeb um and so do you know that um song from sesame street which is about a rubber

duck yes so we just do it to the theme of that so it normally goes rubber ducky you're the one you make bath time so much fun but we do tiny bugle you're the one you make everything so much fun tiny bugle i'm awfully fond of tiny bugle wish i had a whole pond of tiny bugle we're awfully fond of you yeah i love it thank you so much molly that might be anything less creative and brilliant best yet that's better than paloma faith molly i'm fully down with that i'll release it next month please number one right thank you for being an absolutely awesome guest molly i hope the first term at school continues to go well and i can't wait to hear more fabulous questions get answered on the pod thank you thank you so much bye