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It’s back to school — and worried parents just can't stop sharing their tales of woe and disorder

Lucy Tobin: Matt Writtle
Lucy Tobin: Matt Writtle

A couple of years ago only actual parents would have known when school terms were starting. Then one savvy shop invented “Back to School” — a capitalised Shopping Occasion. Not (yet) as artificial as Black Friday or Blue Monday but nonetheless the successful commercialisation of children sitting in a classroom.

It’s not just the pencil case and new shoes now: Ikea says you’ll need a new Back to School desk! Curry’s has “new- term” TVs! It’s only a matter of time before Jeremy Corbyn suggests a Back to School bank holiday.

Still, if the screaming high street posters somehow passed you by, you won’t have been able to avoid social media’s spewing of Back to School snaps. For like the meal, which used to be something to be eaten but has now been transformed into The Image of a Plate — a multi-textured, oatmeal-hued icon of conspicuous consumption — so too for parenting.

Nowadays the morning a kid goes back to the place they spent 200 or so days of the previous year has more set-piece photos than a royal wedding.

There’s August’s smug trying-on of uniform post (#webeatthecrowds!). There’s the influencer’s photo of an ugly black leather shoe casually lying on a pillow (“Utopia loves her new #marksandspencer shoes so much she slept with them last night! #shoeobsessed #ad”).

Today the big day has finally swung round: it’s Back to School. On social media this goes one of two ways. First, the parents who have perfected the door shot: immaculate children, ruler-straight socks, beaming straight at the camera (how many screen-time hours of bribes and bucketfuls of Haribo were involved? I’ll bet most are set-ups, snapped a week ago, well before the morning rush).

Then there’s the other extreme. The snap of an upended Petit Filous splattered on the floor, accompanied by a quote such as one I spotted this morning: “I just dry shampoo’d and Febreze’d my kid on his way out the door this morning, so no, I’m not really interested in your family’s morning chore chart, Laura.”

The rise of the competitive crap parent — who is constantly uploading footage of their kid’s beetroot-faced tantrums on Instagram and tweeting about the 284 episodes of Paw Patrol that Henry watched today because of his parents’ “adult headache” — is almost as sad (though eminently more enjoyable) as social media’s faked perfect families. Their “look at our messy real-life!” scenes might be a scream for a like, or a £50 #ad, but what price that child’s privacy?

“Look at our messy real-life!” scenes might be a scream for a like, or a £50 #ad, but what price that child’s privacy?"

There’s a sad reason for all this. The expense of London housing and childcare mean the average family struggles to afford having two parents with careers. Wannabe-Instamums usually just want to earn enough to quit their current all-hours job and spend more time with their kids. Given the backlash against perfection, painting those kids as cartoon villains is an easier way in.

It just feels like, in a world dominated by an internet without a “delete” button, those children are paying a heavy price for their free-thanks-to-an-#ad school shoes.

This is no time to get tight over charities

Athlete Usain Bolt (Unicef)
Athlete Usain Bolt (Unicef)

Fewer Londoners are giving money to charity and we’re carrying out less voluntary work than five years ago. It can’t be that we aren’t generous — the outpouring of support after events such as Grenfell proves otherwise, and when Usain Bolt and Olly Murs played in Unicef’s charity football match , it raised more than £5 million.

However, cash-strapped charities are desperate for help. Since we don’t seem to be feeling flush, we could all instead donate our time. Take the new HelpForce charity, which puts volunteers to work in hospitals, with tasks such as reminding patients of appointments, or asking motorcyclists to deliver blood. It eases the burden — and helps fill the NHS begging bowl. Whether it’s the little things — during maternity leave I took my children to visit residents in an elderly care home, which gave the old folk so much joy — or bigger tasks, something’s got to give.

*Oddly named company So Sweaty boasts of the popularity of its “weight-loss body suit” which, it claims, sees wearers “shift weight and get in shape”, thanks to “light compression [that] helps minimise your appetite".

Said item is not, the maker claims, a corset. Just an apparatus that looks like one. In the 1870s feminist author Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was already telling women to burn the things: “Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens… your emancipation has begun!” she wrote. That the corset has made a comeback is neither healthy nor sensible: squashing your body’s organs doesn’t seem a logical route to fitness. For that, we still must take the long route — to get so sweaty.