a chat with mum + author sydney piercey on parenting + play
Can you tell us a little about you and your family?
I’m Sydney, and I’m a mother and an author. I live with my husband and our three daughters, who are four, two and nine months, and our two dogs, in the south of France. We’re a very close, very noisy family, and life is full of joy, babies and chaos.
Describe where you live?
We live in a sunny, peaceful village in Provence. It’s a small village in the countryside with the perfect mix of wonderful weather, lots of green space, and a sweet community of neighbours and locals. Our house is surrounded by woods, hills and streams, acres of land where people grow food and keep animals—in fact, our next-door neighbour often lets her horses roam in her garden, which is amazing to wake up to and spy out of the bedroom window!
When did you move there?
We moved here in the summer of 2020. The first lockdown of the Covid pandemic was a massive teaching moment for our family. My husband and I realised how much we both wanted and needed to be around our children more, rather than commuting into a busy city every day and trying to pack all of our quality time into the weekends. And also, we craved space. We were living in London and felt very lucky to have a small courtyard garden, but we wanted green and lots of it.
Where did you move from?
We moved from south-east London, the same area I grew up in, and an area I love. It’s funny because I had to work quite hard to sell it to my husband, who wanted to live in south-west London (closer to where he grew up), and then
