The Peters family were part of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. This means that a camera crew followed the family around the house for a week and filmed them for the television. There are five people in the family: Jennifer, Sebastian, Josh, Chloe and Basil.

Jennifer Petersen is the head of the family. She is a solicitor = lawyer and mixes a busy job with her busy work looking after the family. Her husband, Sebastian stays at home to look after the children. He has a job as a translator so he can work from home. He does his job on a computer in the living room. He has made an arrangement with his wife so that she works full-time*/part-time and he does what he can when she is out.

Sebastian is disabled and needs to use a wheelchair to move around the house. Because of this he can't do the same jobs around the house as the others. Basil is only three so he can't either. This means that when Jennifer is out at work, Josh and Chloe do a lot of work in the house.

Chloe does her best. She is only six and isn't as good at most jobs as Josh (who is ten), but she is just as happy to help. Chloe was helping her mother do the ironing but she left the iron on a shirt and made a hole in it. Josh did a bit of sewing on it and repaired it. Josh likes sewing, even though his friends at school think it's a girl's job.

Sebastian does the washing up, and the laundry. At the moment he doesn't do the ironing, although they are going to buy an ironing board that will fix to the wall. At the moment it is impossible to use a normal ironing board with a wheelchair. The special ironing board was Sebastian's idea because he thought he wasn't doing enough to help round the house.

Jennifer has a lot of work to do today. She has made a start on the dinner but she's going to finish it when she comes back from work. She has to go to court with one of her clients and doesn't know what time it is going to finish. Josh knows that he and Chloe might be in bed when she comes home so he has made a list of things to do before that.

The family have a lot more work to do than a lot of families in their neighbourhood, but Josh and Chloe never make a fuss. For them all of this is normal.

Vocabulary

fly-on-the-wall documentary documental de observación

 camera crew equipo de cámara 
 head of the family. 

solicitor = lawyer 

 looking after cuidar

 translator traductor

 arrangement acuerdo plan cita 

works full-time trabaja a tiempo completo
wheelchair

 either. 
 do smn's best. 

 isn't as good at most jobs as Josh  To be as good as es tan bueno como

 just as igualmente

 sewing

 even though a pesar de

laundry lavanderia

ironing board 

fix arreglar fijar a la pared

 enough suficiente
 court juzgado
make a fuss montar un pollo