The best bit…


family & parenting

Now I’ve been parenting for 9 years, I know there are only three rules or pieces of advice that are worth anything. Two of them I have written about before: Buy a coat with a hood. Not for them, for you. You will never, ever, ever be able to handle an umbrella and a buggy, […]

7th November 2016

Don’t Touch


family & parenting

My favourite parenting nightmare is when a simple conversation with a toddler is revealed later to have a different, often diametrically opposite meaning to each participant. Or indeed when many conversations appear to have been at cross purposes. Such as in February when we realised the toddler thought that the word for the ladder on […]

9th May 2013

Age Appropriate


family & parenting

I’ve written before about Spider-boy’s attachments and obsessions when it comes to TV, notably his hearty love for Fireman Sam and later Gigglebiz, which have now also been consigned to the scrap yard for all things too babyish. He is now, with typical four-year-old full immersion, hooked on Horrible Histories and Deadly 60. I think […]

21st May 2012

Technology baby: out of touch


words

All children I know and have ever met have been obsessed with technology. I suspect it is somehow linked to their connection with the future – they are, of course, closer to it than us. Kicking off the edge of the past, as represented by us, floating out further than we can reach to find […]

28th April 2012

Mother Tongue: Only connect…


depression, family & parenting, words

This weekend I had a fleeting online chat with Michael Rosen , a massive hero of mine. We tweeted about the inner meanings of Roald Dahl’s The Twits. It was one of my proudest moments when he retweeted my undergraduate analysis (that The Twits is all Foucault innit, a parable on internal flaws exposed). Or […]

2nd April 2012

Snow joking matter


family & parenting

Don’t worry, this isn’t an obligatory ‘we had a charming day in the snow’ post. Not that I didn’t enjoy some blogs over the last few weeks, or see some amazing pictures posted all over t’interweb showing kids in cute wellies, cheeks glowing in the cold, tableaux after tableaux of smiling through damp socks. On […]

22nd February 2012

The biggest insult


family & parenting

I was prepared, if apprehensive, for school and the complex battering process of growing up my son would be entering in to. His socialisation, so to speak. I say prepared, I mean aware, aware and slightly worried about it. My lad, my lovely, naive, curious, beautiful lad with all his silliness and ghosts of toddler […]

1st February 2012

Traditions, Traditions


family & parenting, hope

When I was pregnant with Spider-boy I spent a lot of time thinking about Christmas even though he was a summer baby and I had barely been scanned in December. The thing was I rather felt that festive traditions could sum up your parenting techniques, aims and hopes. I still do, a bit, though in […]

16th December 2011

Haircut!


family & parenting

Spider-boy has been shorn. A quick trim to curtail the curls tickling his eyes became a short back and sides. In a sitcom moment I both showered him in compliments and kisses whilst mouthing to thathusband: ‘What have you done to my baby?’. He looks sweet. And grown up (therein lies perhaps part of my […]

2nd November 2011