EXCLUSIVE: Countdown’s Rachel Riley has opened up about the struggles of parenting during the summer holidays and the challenges she and husband Pasha Kovalev face when trying to bring up their chldren
Rachel Riley has admitted that it is “really hard” to be a parent during the summer holidays. The Countdown star famously met her husband Pasha Kovalev when they competed on Strictly Come Dancing together in 2013, and they went on to have Maven, six, and four-year-old Noa together.
But as the summer holidays have kicked in, Rachel, 40, who shot to fame fresh out of university when she was chosen to replace Carol Vorderman on Channel 4’s long-running letters and numbers game, has explained just how tricky it is to manage schedules, especially as she and her husband are both self-employed.
She said: “Pasha’s going to be going on tour from September through to November. So he’s about to get really busy and disappear. So we’re just at the moment, for the school holidays, we’re tag-teaming who’s around and who’s not. And every time, someone gets a bit of work or someone says, ‘Can we go and do this?’, you’re just lining up diaries and making sure it works. As a working parent, it’s really hard.”
But like many parents, Rachel and Pasha just seem to make it work despite the challenges and she insisted that comes from neither of them striving for perfection, and claimed that children don’t really need both parents around at any given time.
She said: “I think the secret is not to worry about being perfect. They don’t need both [parents] around all the time, either. I always think there’s more pressure on the mums than the dads to be there. Things are obviously different in different households, but if your kids are happy, then it doesn’t really matter.”
Even though Strictly Come Dancing is the reason they met, Rachel explained that by the time the BBC Saturday night favourite comes around, she won’t have time to tune in to see how the likes of EastEnders star Lacey Turner, singer Delta Goodrem and Kim Kardashian’s hairdresser Chris Appleton fare on the dancefloor.
When asked if she will be watching the new series, she said: “Well, by the time it comes on, Pasha will be on tour, so he won’t even be here. And I’ll be with the two kids by myself, so it will be all about trying to get through the bath and bed routine really.”
Around her busy schedule, Rachel is heading up Energizer’s Summer Safety Swap campaign she believes is something all parents need to hear about after finding out that one in five parents admitted they would not know what to do if their child swallowed a Lithium Coin battery, often found in key fobs and digital scales amongst other small electronic devices.
She said: “With something like lithium coin batteries, it’s a 999 emergency, and you’ve got a red light straight away. again. As a parent there are so many things where it’s like, ‘Danger of this!’ and ‘Life hack here!’ And then some things are actually really serious and you can’t ignore.
“If it comes in contact with saliva, it goes bright blue to alert the parent. It tastes disgusting, so to discourage kids putting them in their mouth, and it’s got child-proof packaging, if you’ve got any loose batteries, or any devices where the screws are dodgy, and then dispose of them properly by taking them to a supermarket or a hardware store because they can’t go in the bin.
“For me, it’s just about starting to talk about it because too often this sort of thing you might only hear about once there’s been a horrible tragedy.”
Rachel has partnered with Energizer to encourage families to check their homes for hidden battery hazards and replace old lithium coin batteries with the new Energizer® Ultimate Child Shield™ batteries, the world’s only lithium coin battery that prevents ingestion burns if swallowed
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