Nadia Sawalha ‘feels overwhelmed with worry for the world’ every single day

Loose Women star Nadia Sawalha has revealed her overwhelming worry for the world during the pandemic.

The former EastEnders star, 55, and her television producer husband Mark Adderley, 49, have kept extremely busy throughout lockdown.

In addition to her appearances on Loose Women, Nadia has also been appearing regularly on her YouTube channel with Mark and their two daughters Maddie and Kiki, where they discuss everything from films to food and everyday life.

However, the pair have also penned a whole new book on an issue that has become even more widespread in recent months: home-schooling.

Nadia and Mark’s new book Honey, I Home-Schooled The Kids sees the couple lay bare the process of educating their children outside of the school system, and also how and why they have made the decisions they have.

Speaking to Mirror Online, Nadia and Mark revealed what it has been like to tackle a subject that stirs such passionate feelings in so many.

On their lives during the pandemic, Nadia said: “It was very busy for us and then we were working on the book and we do a lot of stuff on our YouTube channel that actually is great as we do it all from home, and also our children have been home-schooled for the last five years, so we were ready in a lot of ways.”

“We were like survivalists, we were ready to go,” added Mark.

In fact, the interaction online with their followers on social media made a real difference to both of their lives in lockdown.

“It worked because it allowed us to have that two-way communication,” noted Mark.

“We could see and hear that it was helping an awful lot of other people and we’ve spoken on social media about battles with mental health and for us as a couple, it’s worked very well.”

“We talk to a cross-section of people every single day so we all just support each other, it really was incredible,” said Nadia.

However, she pointed out: “At the same time it was scary, petrifying, horrific, can’t quite believe it, still in shock.”

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Nadia feels very lucky but can’t help but feel great anxiety.

The Loose Women star added: “I actually, on a daily basis, feel overwhelmed with worry for the world and for the economy and people’s jobs, so I have these moments ‘I’m so grateful, I’m so grateful’, but I get survivor’s guilt sometimes when I think about what so many people are go through: redundancy, and being thrown out of their homes.

“We talk a lot to people on social media and this is what fear they going through day in day out.”

So, what made them decide to focus on telling people about their home-schooling experiences?

Mark explained: “There was a day where Maddie came into the kitchen and was like ‘Dad, Dad, they’re calling my way of life quarantine’ and both of our hearts went out to a lot of people going through an awful lot of panic.

“I think that state of panic is being continued by the government with the language that is being used about the return to school.

“We’ve never been anti-school, we fell upon home-schooling as a way to help our children be happy and we just wanted to share our stories so people weren’t as scared.”

Nadia added: “We wanted a book that would look at the emotional roller coaster that you’re on when you swim in the opposite direction to everybody else.”

The couple were keen that their approach to home-schooling wouldn’t become just “a soundbite” and actually got the whole truth of the experience down in writing.

The book also explores the pair’s own educations, with Mark’s being rather conventional and even up starting a PhD before leaving to ‘join the real world’, which resulted in conflict for Mark about home-schooling their children to start with.

He revealed: “The regulations, targets and exams, whilst I did that and it worked for me, it took me a bit of time to un-think that.”

Both of them wanted to clarify, however, that their advocating of home-schooling is by no means a criticism of all schools.

Nadia notes: “We’re not anti-schools, we’re anti-bad schools, we’re anti the fact that many teachers feel very frustrated with the constant testing and the curriculum and our daughter is going back to school next September – and she’s made that choice and doing it very happily and we actually see that as a massive success and we say to her ‘you’ll now be doing GCSEs’ and – we both believe that GCSEs should be scrapped – we say ‘we don’t give a damn about grades as long as you enjoy learning’.”

Addressing concerns about the social lives of children at home, the couple believes it is a misconception to think that children who go to school have that sorted.

“I took them to lots of groups and both of our girls have a really good mixture of friends, different types, different ages,” detailed Nadia.

“Our kids joined home ed groups, they had social groups.”

She also said she believes it is a disservice for parents who home-school who think it all has to be done in the house, with the possibilities of clubs and outings to add to their learning.

“My strength is that I’m not highly educated and yet I am excited about everything and am really open to learning,” stated Nadia. “Our tip for everyone through lockdown was ‘Do not, whatever you do, set yourself up as a teacher.'”

The Loose Woman advocates instead to “facilitating” learning and use hired tutors but in groups to spread the cost across four or five home-educated kids.

The pair also addressed recent findings that suggested that British children are the most unhappy in Europe.

Nadia noted: “Adults are unhappy. We work so hard in this country.

“We were looking at France and Italy and Spain and the dolce vita, this sweetness of life that they have, families sitting and eating together and not having to work such long hours as we do in this country, and with extortionate prices of train travel, bus travel – people are stretched.”

The silent epidemic of unhappiness with British children is likely just a symptom of a general culture problem, the pair believe.

“The unhappiness of kids is the reflection of how unhappy parents are,” concluded Mark.

Could more home-schooling be the answer?

Honey, I Home-Schooled The Kids by Nadia Sawalha and Mark Adderley is published by Coronet, £14.99, out now.

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