Networking on the run

This week the mothers in my eldest daughter's class in school are getting together for our annual pre-Christmas dinner. (Dear Mums, I'm sorry I was too frazzled last week to make those invitational phone calls, leaving another Mum to do it for me. I hope you'll understand.) It's always a great night of warmth, wit and wine where we celebrate another year of successfully manoeuvring our way through the parenting maze.

If school is where children are educated and socialised, then it's the school-run that can be a goldmine of information and support for parents.

Sometimes you hear people ridiculing the groups of parents - often mothers - who stand around school entrances talking and blocking traffic. But there is serious communication being done here. The school gate is the boardroom of the parent network.

It's there that you hear about what's happening in school and have a chance to exchange views on it. We talk about parenting, the pragmatics of child-rearing and sometimes - don't be shocked - even about politics, the media and world events. The school carpark has even been known to offer up the occasional subject for this column.

The school-run, far from being a waste of time, is above all, an opportunity to exchange various kinds of support. Maybe a mother is about to have a baby or has just had one, or has been ill and needs help with the school-run. My compatriot Mums have saved my life at times. There is one that offered to be on call for me 24 hours a day when I was about to go into hospital for my third delivery. Once when I was sick with a really bad bout of flu, she came to my house and got my kids dressed and fed and off to school.

Other Mums are there at the end of the phone, ready to pick my children up from school in an emergency. But I don't want to be one of those "working" mothers who take the generosity and don't give back. All parents work hard - so I do my best to return the help, bringing children home when their parents have a last-minute appointment or critical support system failure, like a sick childminder.

I've noticed too that the mobility of Irish society means that many families have been uprooted from other places, and may not have always have strong, local family networks of support. Parents who meet other parents at the school gate and bond over their children and shared problems can be invaluable support to each other in these circumstances. Some of us work full-time outside the home, others work outside the home and still others work flexibly from home. Whatever we do, we all know how hard it can be to keep the show on the road. Nobody understands you better than those who are in the same boat.

I'm talking a lot about mothers here. I'm in the fortunate position that my children's father takes equal responsibility for the school-run and is at the school gates as often as I am. Lots of other fathers do the same, and I've noticed that the younger the class, the more fathers are involved in dropping off children and picking them up. But for some reason, fathers don't seem to network like mothers do (though, at my son's school, fathers volunteer for a Saturday soccer club, which is a great way for them to be involved).

Listening to your children is also a vital part of the school-run. One mother confided recently that she knew everything that was going on in her children's classes just by eavesdropping on what the children were saying in the back of the car. That delicate re-entry period, when children are recovering from a tiring day, is often the time when they blurt out their news. It's a privilege to be there to hear it.

As psychologist and overall wise woman Maureen Gaffney said to me recently, children don't need to have you involved with them one-on-one all the time. They just like to have you around. Susie Orbach, another psychologist and author, confided over a drink that being a good parent is about "being there ready and waiting, for the two minutes a day when your children decide they want to communicate with you". The school-run is an important part of that. It's one of those essential social functions that's unpaid and unsung, without which society couldn't function.