My character is a real person, Verónica Estay. As an actress, playing someone real is quite a challenge. When she saw my work, she was very happy. She told me that there were moments when she felt that I was more her than she was herself.

This summer that is now ending has undoubtedly been one of the strangest I remember as a teacher. It is a summer that has come after a very turbulent school year, with mobilizations that have certainly been historic, but which have left us exhausted.

The school year begins, and with it, families set in motion an almost perfect machinery: the fashionable backpack, the wonderfully covered books, schedules squared to the millimeter, and WhatsApp groups in full swing. We try to anticipate everything so that our children begin school calmly and without difficulties. But, sometimes, in this legitimate attempt to protect them, we are literally leaving them unprotected, because we eliminate what will help them most to become strong: the small daily setbacks. The start of the school year is a magnificent moment to train resilience, especially when they haven't gotten the teacher they expected, or their best friend is in another class, or everyone says it will be a complicated year.

Eva, my eldest daughter, got married before the summer and, if I were still writing The Worst Mother in the World, I would have liked to explain the impact and the emotion I felt seeing her take that step. I would confess that I cried like a baby. Perhaps soon it will be your turn to write The worst grandmother in the world.

The afternoon is very hot in Washington DC, but that is not the reason why you do not see children or elderly people. The city is usually like this. As the seat of the federal government, Congress, and so many companies and institutions around it, the American capital is a magnet for recent graduates and young professionals who lower the city's average age and turn its landscape into almost that of a TV series. Retiring here is not the most common thing, but Carmen and Ralph Van Roy wouldn't change it for anything.

Orelletes is a rabbit who is starting preschool (I3) and experiences it with the same intensity as many children who are entering a school for the first time. He cries, he doesn't like saying goodbye to his parents, he finds it hard to share toys, and he prefers to play alone, so he hides in a corner. With a lot of tact, the teacher helps him to breathe, to be calm, and he ends up joining the circle with the rest of the group. He is the protagonist of Orelletes at school, a story that aims to help experience this process from a kinder and more conscious space. Self-published by preschool teacher Meritxell Casanova, the story empathizes with the child and gives advice to parents to make these first weeks of schooling easier.

Well, that's it. This week we are going back to school and even though, for the sake of appearances, teachers and students keep saying "how lazy we are and how little desire we have," the reality is that we are always excited (even if just a little bit) to start over. Starting a new school year is like falling in love again: new clothes, organizing plans, the desire to do it well. This year, yes.

The writer and secondary school teacher Roc Casagran doesn't have many memories of primary school. He would summarize it as a few years in which he had a good time, played and enjoyed himself with friends, "which is what it was all about," he points out, and learned from his teachers: "I barely remember specific activities, except for mental calculation exercises, which I really liked. The important thing there was speed, they gave us 10 mental calculation problems and you had to answer quickly." It surprises him to remember precisely that, considering that he later leaned towards literature. "You know that adults tend to compartmentalize learning, but I like and liked reading and writing and also calculation; it's not incompatible," he assures. Until the first year of primary school he was enrolled at the Escola Nostra Llar in Sabadell. His parents have spoken to him several times about the teachers he had, wonderful professionals with whom he began the process of learning to read and write. "It's a shame I don't remember them, because I learned a lot from them," he comments. Then he went to Joanot Alisanda School, a school with a huge playground compared to the previous one, and which he took advantage of to play football: "I always stayed for lunch; this meant having more time to play and do our own thing. Playing, sweating, and having a good time." What he remembers most from this stage is when he discovered Paco Ibáñez and poetry in general. "It must have been in third or fourth grade, in Spanish class, when they played a song by Paco Ibáñez, and I loved it," he admits. Just as he is unable to name any teacher who marked him from primary school, from secondary school, at the Institut Pau Vila, also public and also from Sabadell, he already has more memories. Here he has more present the classes of the language teachers in general, and more specifically those of Antoni Dalmases, who is also a writer: "He was one of those who not only spoke to you about language and literature. I really liked the teachers who dedicated time to other topics that were not strictly the subject, they spoke about current events and dropped reflections," he comments. At the time, it seemed to him that perhaps they were not very relevant, but, even so, he was interested in the less academic "content" and especially that they treated him not as a small child, but as an almost adult. Another of the teachers who went beyond the content was the writer and Latin teacher, Antoni Pladevall, with whom they spoke about current events and politics.

Maria (40 years old) barely remembers how many years she has been living in Burkina Faso, a West African country. “About 15 or 16, I don't know anymore,” she tells me now, from the house where she lives in the capital, Ouagadougou. Axel, her eldest son, is restless because he wants to play, and the youngest, Jordi, who is not yet a year old, has taken his first steps these days. Her husband, Thierry, also lives at home with them, and they have a dog. The family, however, like almost all African families, is extended and within the four walls of the house there is always someone visiting. A cousin, a brother, a niece, or a sister-in-law. “You can wake up one day and have people sleeping in the living room, it’s very common,” Maria tells me.

Childhood is a stage of learning, not only about the world around us, but also about ourselves. Little ones, among other things, must learn to recognize and manage their emotions. As Vilma Montoliu, a naturopath and therapist, explains: coach specialized in conscious breathing and meditation in the book I am like the sea (Column, 2025), can meditation be a tool to help them in this process?

"It depends a bit on the children's age, because sometimes we ask them for behaviors they can't give us because their brains aren't yet ready to do them," Montoliu points out. She emphasizes that, by expressing their emotions, children aren't trying to annoy adults, but rather to communicate. "Some parents think they know their children just because they're their children, but they need to get used to asking them more questions. For example, if they notice they're angry, they can ask them if they have a cloud in their head and then tell them, perhaps with the help of stories and tales, why they feel that way." According to Montoliu, this will help them identify their emotions.

]]>

"I've felt judged by other families. They think it's a kind of punishment I'm imposing on my daughter, as if I were depriving her of things. But they don't make me feel bad; quite the opposite. I feel sorry for children who can't eat healthy," explains Daniela Reyes, mother of S.. She and her partner are among the families who avoid sugar in their children's diets.

]]>

My pregnancy went very well, overall. I was lucky enough to feel physically well, so the nine months flew by without me even noticing.

]]>

A sociologist, social educator, and professor of sociology of education at the University of Vic (UVic), Jordi Collet doesn't understand diversity as anything other than normal, and therefore, he doesn't understand why it's experienced internally as a problem. He advocates a change of perspective and a rethinking of schools to utilize resources differently than previously. He explained this in a lecture at the Escola Projecte, as part of the presentation of the first Hermini Tudela Foundation awards, which specifically seek best practices in inclusion.

]]>

All families want the best for their children: for them to be happy, to have friends, to do well in school, to be well... But what makes them feel satisfied in their lives? And, above all, what can we do as families to promote this?

]]>

Nearly twenty years ago, Eva Boix took over Can Joval, a 12th-century farmhouse in Clariana del Cardener, in Solsonès, and forged a family-run summer camp project that, with 120 beds surrounded by forest and nature, offers family stays, burrows, esplais, and schools. It's a rustic farmhouse where they focus on personalized service and take care of every detail, both in the house and in the activities they offer. In the field of school camps, for several years now, they've offered themed stays and educational projects so children and young people can make the most of this break in their daily lives. It's a transformation they've also had to undergo to adapt to changing regulations in the sector, which restrict certain activities and games to avoid risks, which affects the design of these stays.

]]>

You must have been very small, but you were already talking like a little man, perched on the wooden chair, stirring the plate and asking us if that piece of meat would grow back, the suckling pig.

]]>

We still find it uncomfortable to talk about sex with our children because in my generation we were raised in taboo and silence. We are mothers, fathers, charas—a term used to describe non-binary people who have children—born before or during the transition, and our backpacks are filled with the Christian morality that nurtured sexuality in those times.

]]>

"I've cried more for Laia than for my marriage," explains Neus Velasco about the breakup of their relationship and their blended family. Five years later, they had a daughter together: Arlet, Laia's half-sister. The relationship lasted nine years, the longest in a child's life. "When the relationship broke up, it was very brutal, and not just for me. The end of a blended family not only ends the relationship as a couple, but also the emotional bonds built with the children and, often, with other close members, collateral victims of this family change. I had the intention of breaking anything off, but contact with the girls was emotionally unbearable for me.

]]>

Just over two months ago, families visiting the emergency room or pediatric clinics at Hospital del Mar discovered how healthcare staff use pictograms when treating them. They are able to identify the symptoms that most illnesses present. From headaches, neck pain, stomach pain, or back pain, fever, runny nose, cough, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea, or dizziness, plaques, etc. And the possible treatments, from the simplest, such as a syrup, a pill, or a bandage, to the more complex, such as intubation, insertion of an IV, or insertion of a urinary or nasogastric tube (TEA), or with a language barrier, in the case of newly arrived families.

]]>

Lapland It arose from conversations with Cristina Clemente and Jordi Casanovas, its producer. The three of us have children of similar ages, and one day the topic of how we would handle Christmas came up, following the case of friends who had chosen not to trick their children into believing the Three Wise Men existed. This option seemed very radical, very disruptive.

]]>