Tag Archives: children

April 13, 2011 · 9:23 am

School holidays: Only two days down, 17 to go . . .

Take four children aged between 13 and three. Entertain for two weeks. Your time starts . . . now!

Monday: Take car to garage, dramatically reducing options.
Make older children cycle to orthodonist to get brace re-attached.
Walk younger two up to municipal baths which everyone has been nagging to go to for months. Meet elder two at baths. Pay £15. Within 20 minutes all but one of them is complaining of being bored.

Tuesday: Make picnic. Head to park. Realise it’s not that warm when sun goes behind clouds. Eat. Play football. Bounce on inflatable green cow. Realise Son 2 is playing football in socks and won’t wear trainers “cos they don’t fit.”
Drive to town to buy new trainers. End up buying fours pairs of shoes, three pairs of kid shorts, kid PJs, kid dress, three kid t-shirts, dress I’ll probably never wear. (All in the sales).  Go home. Feel skint.

Wednesday: Cleaning house today. They ain’t gonna like it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 26, 2011 · 9:57 am

We’re all going on a festi-holiday

SEEING as we’re all skint, and booking an overseas family holiday seems a thing of the past, we’ve started planning this year’s Festi-Hol.

Blessed with an oversized family and an ageing Bongo campervan, our trips away in recent years have included one of my big dislikes – camping.

However, throw me at a festival and somehow the discomfort and hassle seems to lessen. Slightly.

Add a few bottles of cider and some brilliant live bands at sundown and I’m yours for the duration. I’ll even bring my own supernoodles.

The mother of all family festivals is Camp Bestival in Dorset, which drew us in a couple of years back with promises of Mr Tumble, Zane Lowe and Florence and the Machine.

Combining the weekend with a few days exploring beautiful Dorset from a windy campsite, we felt we’d killed two birds with one stone. The kids slept in a tent, played on beaches and ran around at a festival being either cool and detached, arty and dancy, or just watching mesmerised from the comfort of a pram (depending on their age).

This year we’re tempted back to Camp Bestival as they appear to have booked headline acts specifically with us in mind: Blondie, Primal Scream, Mark Ronson, Wrench 32, Katy B, the Gruffalo and Mr Tumble. Add in the skatepark, comedy tent, zoo in the woods and fellow families-in-the-same-boat, and it’s already sounding better than a week in Majorca.

If you’re nervous of festi-holling with kids, then do your research. We used to do the festival circuit regularly pre-parenthood, and some we’d avoid. While Glastonbury does cater well for families, it is dauntingly huge. V, Reading and Leeds are not really aimed at a junior audience, and you tend to see more than you bargain for at the more rock or dance music festivals.

Some of the family festivals offer payment plans, but charge extra for boutique camping, parking and camper passes.

If you don’t have a campervan, the festival experience isn’t too hideous. You can park up and transfer all heavy tent stuff to a pull-trolley (most festivals will hire you one), and the toilet facilities are much, much better than they used to be.

As long as you’re prepared to carry a few packets of tissues and wash with wet-wipes for a couple of days, sleep badly, eat far too many chips, and bribe your children with over-priced ice-creams, it’s a great experience. There’s so much to see, as well as people-watching the wild dressing-up outfits and the Boden-clad Yummy Mummies who get their nannies to watch the kids while they pretend to like poetry.

Finish your weekend with a visit to Monkey World or the Tank Museum, and a festi-hol can tick more boxes than your average family trip ever could.

Family-friendly festivals for 2011

Larmer Tree, July 13 – 17, near Salisbury. 5 days £197 adult, £158 aged 11-17, £127 5-10, day tickets available. Line-up Joolz Holland, Imelda May, Seasick Steve, Asian Dub Foundation.

Camp Bestival – July 28-31, Lulworth Castle, Dorset, Adult £170, Ages 11-17 £85, under 11s free, Line-up Blondie, Primal Scream, Laura Marling, Mark Ronson, ABC, Katy B

Womad, July 29-31, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, £135, £70 aged 14-17, under 13s free. Line-up: Very much world/jazzy

Guilfest July 15-17, Stoke Park, Guildford, £120 , aged 12-15 £70, under 12s free. Line-up Razorlight, James Blunt, PIL, Peter Andre and Erasure

Beautiful Days, August 19-21, Devon, adult, £110, 14-17, £60, under 14 £30. Line-up Big Audio Dynamite, Cater USM and founders The Levellers

Latitude, July 14-17, Beccles, Suffolk, Adult £170, £5 for 5-12 year olds. Line-up, The National, Suede, Paolo Nutini, Waterboys, OMD, Paloma Faith

Bestival – September 8-11, Isle of Wight, £170, aged 13-15 £85, under 13s free. Line-up The Cure, Primal Scream, Magnetic Man, Grandmaster Flash, loads more names

Shambala, Aug 25-28, Kelmarsh, Northants, £119, 15-17 years £79, 5-14 years £29, under 5s free, no names, no advertising, no sponsors, good fun.

1 Comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 25, 2011 · 8:45 am

Peppa Pig’s Party felt like a mugging

BONNIE, aged 3, has been quite beside herself with excitement this week as she knew there was a promise of a trip to see Peppa Pig.

Peppa Pig’s Party is a touring show with live puppets of Peppa, George plus all their friends. Needless to say Northampton’s Derngate auditorium was packed to the rafters with excited under-fives.

Good puppets

Bonnie was dumbstruck as the show opened and Susie Sheep appeared, talking to the audience, perched a-top a tent. But as the show progressed and the visible human puppeteers shared stage time with her cartoon heroes, she lost interest.

The puppets are very impressive and the actors do their best to imitate the voices of the TV characters. There was singing and dancing, and George’s tantrum tears soaked a few rows of the audience, to much hilarity. But sadly there was little else of the familiar humour of the cartoon show in the stage script.

The shrill voice of Peppa’s new human ‘friend’ Daisy made me wince throughout, and the whole affair seemed remarkably short. About an hour with a very long interval to buy merchandise? At £15.50 a ticket? A family ticket over £50? Not very good value for money, but not, I suspect, the fault of Derngate, as touring shows tend to set their own prices.

We felt further mugged when we found it cost £7 for a light-up windmill (take your old one from the panto), £5 for a very cheap and flimsy programme filled with Peppa product adverts, and most shocking, £4 for a balloon. Yes, four pounds for a balloon!

So, five shows in two days in a 2,000 seat theatre, at £15ish a head and a tenner per family for merchandise. . .well, you do the maths.

It all sounds rather greedy, raking in parents’ cash off the back of Peppa Pig’s popularity, and yet there’s a lot better children’s theatre out there struggling to make ends meet. Sorry Peppa, but it was an expensive disappointment.

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting, Reviews

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 4, 2011 · 8:30 am

Big prices for tiny clothes

 I CAN hardly believe how much girly-ness one small person can inflict  onto a family, but sure enough our daughter has us tripping over dolls and pink stuff at every turn.

A big shock to the system was discovering how much dolls clothes cost.

What an utter rip-off. £17.99 for a tiny plain doll’s dress and knickers? That’s more than I pay for clothes for the actual kids. And £5.99 for five doll-sized nappies? It costs less for a pack of 30-odd real ones!

When we finally had a daughter after three beloved sons, I thought we’d escape most of the uber-girl stuff by virtue of her being around boys all the time. Guaranteed tom-boy. None of this gender-stereotyping for my girl.

But since she’s met other girls ( apparently I don’t count), she’s become fixated by dolls, tea-sets and cleaning. So much for the liberation of women.

She’s recently been stripping her dolls of their boring babygros and wrapping them in blankets.

So when some birthday money arrived, we took her to buy some outfits for her dolls. Her 20 quid went on a multi-pack of three girl-doll outfits.

Problem is, one of her three dolls is called Ron.

When we got home we had a grand trying-on session, with me crossing my fingers that Baby Annabel, the chunkier of the three, would squeeze into snug jeans and a t-shirt.

Meanwhile, Baby Ron now sports a pair of pink joggers and a cap-sleeved top.

When I suggested that Baby Ron might actually now be a girl doll rather than a boy doll, she replied firmly: “No, he’s still a boy.” I sincerely hope she stays as non-judgemental and open-minded her whole life.

Having bleated to other parents about the price of dolls’ clothes, I heard two great tips:

The first is never to buy doll’s toys new, but to trawl eBay and car-boot sales for second-hand items. The other is to search charity shops for premature or under-weight baby clothes, which apparently fit most dolls just fine.

My own tip is to use grandma. My mother is a brilliant seamstress and first-class knitter. She makes jumpers for the boys that they actually wear, and very funky hats and ponchos for Bonnie. So I’m going to ask if she’ll make some clothes for the three dolls, Ron, Annabel and Vanessa.

I can see Ron now, in shirt and trousers made from granddad’s old clothes. If I can get her to knit Ron a cardie and make him a cap, it could even be a full-granddad outfit. Needles at the ready Mum?

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 23, 2011 · 8:35 am

For *&$^’s sake, stop swearing . . .

THOSE who know me will snort loudly when they read this, but I hate to hear bad language around kids. Really.

I add the ‘around kids’ disclaimer because, I know you’ll find this hard to believe, I can be prone to a pressure-relieving, potty-mouthed rant at times, (mostly) in adult company. From my experience, journalists rank high among the most frequent users of caustic language on earth.

But I wince when I hear other adults swear with impunity in front of their kids – or any kids for that matter.

My own folks were very strict about us not using bad language, even though they were partial to the odd minor cuss, mostly “bloody,” to emphasise a point. They were allowed to swear, because they were adults. We never really questioned it (and made sure we swore out of earshot).

Imagine my reaction when I overheard one of our older children describing something using a swear word. It wasn’t one of the very, very worst words (rhymes with ‘ditty,’ since you ask), but he got sent to his room and reminded at length about his vocabulary.

A few days later I heard our older boys talking with their friends on Xbox Live, where they have a headset and can talk to each other as they play. I listened in.

The language was shocking, and they didn’t even seem to know the meaning of most of the words they were saying.

“Don’t their parents tell them off for that language?” I asked, only to be told that many of their friends had their games consoles in their bedrooms and their parents didn’t know they were playing, let alone who they were talking to, or what they were saying.

This was further confirmed when I was doing my exercise workouts on the Xbox Kinect, after 10pm, over several nights. Every few minutes I’d get on-screen messages from their friends, imagining that either Jed or Dougie was playing, asking them to connect. This was between 10.30 and midnight on a school night!

We may be aware of the risks our children are exposed to over the internet, and monitor their computer use, but do we have clue what they’re doing on the games consoles in their bedrooms?

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 14, 2011 · 8:28 am

Library closures: why cuts shouldn’t be presented as ‘either/or’

AT a time of painful and apparently limitless cost-cutting, the loss of several public libraries might seem easy compared to closing nursing homes and respite care for the disabled.

But we shouldn’t be looking at these cuts as an ‘either/or’ situation, as the politicians would wish us to. We should be finding ways to preserve it all.

I was looking through some photos of the family over the years and was struck by the fact that the few I have of Bloke have a theme – he’s reading books to the kids.

We visit various town libraries once a month or so. It’s not that we don’t have the luxury of books at home, but with four children, they’ve got a little dog-eared over the years. We can’t afford monthly visits to bookshops, but going to the library means they can keep having their passion for stories – ( Doug and Bill prefer non-fiction) – updated whenever they want, for free.

I must confess to being sometimes tardy with my timekeeping. Despite being able to renew books online, I forgot about some which had become buried in the mess of the boys’ room. By the time they were found, I thought I’d be facing fines like those at university: £10 a DAY for late return of equipment, 60p per HOUR for in-demand loans. I think my fine at the library was about £2.50 for books that were weeks late.

Libraries are not just places for at-home-mums to go with their offspring, students to catch up, or pensioners to use the internet. They are storage units for our history. Journalists may rely far too much on Google, but the real research is to be done in the local history sections, where centuries of newspapers exist on microfiche, old photographs and street records are lovingly indexed, and the minutia of our ancestors are preserved. For now.

So, Save-Our-Libraries, find a way. Stick in a coffee shop. Hold celebrity signings if you must.

And fine me more. I have no excuse.

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 13, 2011 · 4:28 pm

Who’s the (real) Daddy?

BOOTS the Chemist, despite being a bastion of the British High Street and seemingly as virtuous as its head-girl cousin M&S, is a bit of a gossip.

Boots knows all your dirty little secrets.

As well as providing shelves full of ‘adult toys’, discreet morning-after pills and pregnancy testing kits, Boots will go even further: they’ll tell you who the Real Daddy is.

Actually, Boots will take £30 off you to sell you the paternity kit and whack on another £129 for the processing, but eventually, you will indeed find out if someone was, or indeed wasn’t, there at the moment of conception.

In Britain about 50,000 children born every year are registered without a father being named on the birth certificate. However, unlike pregnancy tests and morning-after pills, paternity testing is not available on the NHS, even if ordered by a court.

The justification, say the manufacturers, is that one in 25 men, according to woolly figures quoted in various bits of research, is not the biological parent of a child he believes he fathered.

Paternity tests are nothing new. You could already get them online, and at some independent chemists.

In no way do I think that true paternity should be swept under the table. And I don’t assume this is just an issue of Men’s Rights – and these days they seem to have fewer. I’m sure there are plenty of Dads who have a niggling suspicion that they are bringing up someone else’s child, or paying for one they never actually see.

But there are also mothers who face accusations of infidelity and for whom such a test would prove a father-in-denial responsibility beyond doubt.

The whole process is undoubtedly painful and has argument and betrayal at its core . And yet at the heart of this venom and bitterness is a child, an utterly blameless child.

The kits at Boots do require the presumed father, mother and children over 16 to sign consent forms (with the mother signing for young children), as well as proof of identification – all measures that can be faked, even though since 2006 it has been illegal to take someone’s DNA without permission.

Growing up in the 1970s, there were plenty of rumours about who’s Dad-wasn’t-really-their-Dad. I know people who knew the truth about their parentage, but felt they’d had a better life with the family they had, even if it wasn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I heard a heart-wrenching interview with a father who said he’d always had his doubts that his teenage son was really his, but had brought him up and shared custody after a bitter divorce. When the mum lost her temper and blurted out the truth to her son, he sought reassurance from the man he’d always known as his father. ‘Dad’ then carted the kid off to get a DNA test to prove he’d always been right, then triumphantly returned to throw the evidence in the ex-wife’s face. But what of the 16-year-old child, whose life had just been shattered by the two people he thought loved him unconditionally?

The labs say most tests are done on newborns or very young children who are too young to understand the implications. But they will one day grow up. And what about your DNA being taken? Who is responsible for destroying it? Or will DNA labs be able to sell your data without your consent? Will paternity tests be routinely done in the delivery room so there’s no room for doubt? Or trust?

What Boots has done – purely for its own profit – is ‘normalise’ the paternity test as something you can buy along with deodorant and a sandwich.

Jeremy Kyle must be terrified: who is going to watch the results of “My Mum was a bit of a Slapper” if we can all just pop down to Boots and scrape a cotton bud around our cheeks?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 3, 2011 · 8:30 am

Seeing your children turn into teens can be as baffling as having a newborn

THINGS have changed recently in our house. The basic dynamic of The Parent is Always Right is not as cut and dried as it used to be.

There are always small changes in a house where a new sibling has arrived every couple of years or so, but while they are all aged under ten(ish), the rule of Don’t Do What I Do, Do What I Say has kept things on an even, albeit not very democratic, keel.

Now we have a teenager in the house, and another racing to leave pre-teendom behind, it’s getting trickier.

The elder two get more independence, which the younger two feel is unfair, even though they still want their noses wiped and their laces tied.

The elder two are also expected to increase their contribution to the basic running of the household chores, at the same time that their age means they find it impossible to have any control over their own clothing or belongings. They simply all end up on the floor. Even when the washing basket, school bags or dustbins are within an arm’s length of where their ‘stuff’ ends up.

Add to that the need for more frequent washing, the increase in homework, the addition of girlfriends-you’ve-never-met and the creeping introduction of not-telling-your-parents-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth, and your carefully honed practical parenting skills go out of the window.

In short, seeing your children turn into teens can be as baffling as having a newborn. But the biggest difference between the two stages of development is that you can actually remember being a teenager yourself.

Without wishing to stereotype all teenage boys into the roles of Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke’s Kevin and Perry, it does catch you unawares when your previously inoffensive child turns 13 and inexplicably starts to rudely answer back, or spin an elaborate web of lies to cover up something they knew full well wasn’t allowed.
After the initial incredulity, and the inevitable angry counter retorts, you have to remind yourself that most of the time, they barely realise they are doing it. Getting into a screaming match with a 13 year old just because they muttered and back-chatted about still having a set bed-time isn’t very adult – as Bloke, the much calmer parent, frequently reminds me after the event.

It’s easier with little ones, really, it is. If they are rude to you, usually a cross look and “manners!” will do the trick, or at worst, sending them to their room or withholding privileges. It usually all ends, at the worst, with teary hugs and apologies.

It must be difficult being the eldest and having to go through the teen years first, not only because you haven’t had the advantage of seeing someone else get caught, but because your parents haven’t a clue how to react either.
I promised I wouldn’t embarrass him too much in these columns, but I recently found out the real reason our eldest had been volunteering to cycle to school. It was so he could wait until we’d left so he could wear his non-regulation Converse baseball boots to school instead of the boring black slips-ons he’s already kicked to bits.
My fury wasn’t actually about the boots, it was about the subterfuge. Plus the Big Fat Lie he told a teacher about how his school shoes had holes in, implying we hadn’t bothered to replace them. The shame.
It seems innocuous, but what I struggle with my growing boys is the ease of the lie. I truly find it painful when they fib to me. I’ve always told them that they’ll be in more trouble for the lie than for the original wrong-doing.
Yet I know I’m lying to myself for thinking that my kids won’t be just as devious as I was. After all, at Jed’s age, as soon as I got on the school bus I would flick the brace on my teeth into my pocket and swap my clumpy school shoes for the black suede, paisley-patterned, pointy stilettos that I’d hidden in my bag and which were definitely not allowed.

1 Comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 21, 2011 · 8:44 am

Letting the old bitch out for a daily walk

IT’S not really a New Year’s Resolution, more a necessity to stop my gammy fat knees becoming arthritic, but I’ve started a daily walking routine.

I know, I know, you’ve heard all this before. Last time it was the running in the summer, before that years and years of gym memberships.

Racecourse dragon

But the grinding of cartilage under my kneecap is serious. The walking routine has to be kept up, and means a change in the family dynamic. Mum must be given half an hour every day to go for a walk. However, sometimes lack of babysitters means I have to take a walking buddy. And we don’t have dog (despite constant nagging from the offspring).

Bonnie is really doesn’t like being confined to the buggy but I can bribe her around the Racecourse now with a promise that we’ll visit the dragon at the end. The councils get a lot of flack for their decisions but for once they deserve praise – for the dragon play area at the, ahem, less salubrious end of the park is really looking, well, like a dragon. And for those of us needing exercise, racing up and down the steep humps after a toddler is as tough as circuit training. . .

PS – This is my 100th post. Don’t say I never stick at anything.

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2011 · 10:37 am

Probably the worse record ever made, and it’s about Northampton

IT’S an underused, under-publicised and under-rated resource and probably in line for cost-cutting, but I love Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.

We don’t go often enough. We aren’t one of those families who go to all the Toddlers’ Afternoons, where you can make things with your under-fives. Upcoming events include a chance to make Chinese Lanterns on January 27, a Spanish Fan on March 3, or the ambitious-sounding Native American Wigwam workshop on March 31.

No, I go with the kids maybe two or three times a year when we find ourselves in town at a loose end. You should go, (it’s opposite the theatres) it’s warm, and interesting, and free!

I expect most Northamptonians haven’t been since being dragged there on a school trip, and I dare say much of it may not have changed since. While a lot of exhibits seem unchanged for decades, there is always something new every time we visit.

We’ve been going since the older boys were babies. They’ll tell you all about the Elephant Boot in the Shoe Museum part. All our kids have played with the shoe shiner and the twirly thing, where you spin sections of a cube to give different heads, outfits and shoes.

They have been through the weird and wonderful top floor, which features the history of Northampton, including a bit where you sit in a tunnel-that’s-not-a-tunnel watching a small flicking orange light, listening to the story of the Great Fire of Northampton. The floor ends with a bizarre corporation video extolling the virtues of 80s (or is it 70s?) Northampton with the kitsch ‘pop single’ called Sixty Miles by Road or Rail playing as the finale. It’s so bad it’s brilliant. You’ll see what I mean here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W52nq58OYsU

The museum is tragically under-publicised. Recently, Billy was most excited on a random visit to see football boots worn by the likes of David Beckham and Gary Lineker. There’s currently shoe exhibits from top sportsmen, including Roger Federer whose feet are HUGE. But disappointingly, they don’t say what size the shoes are, which I found strangely frustrating.

The museum might be known for its massive, historic collection of shoes, including very modern Blaniks and Westwoods, but it’s the rest that keeps me coming back.

The art gallery – and it does belong to you, the people – has an extraordinary collection that, let’s face it, most of us ignore and our children will never see. It needs to change.

The gallery currently has an exhibition called Big, Bold and Bizarre, running until February 27, and I urge you to drop in, as Billy, Bonnie and I did this week. The first thing to catch the kids’ eye – aside from the textile-covered lion and a kids’ drawing table – was a large oil painting at the end. “There’s Hairy Alan Moore,” said Billy, casually referring to someone he knows as a family friend, rather than a world-famous graphic novelist.

It’s a small exhibition covering everything from contemporary modern art to busts of the Fermors from Easton Neston, dating from 1658. My personal favourite is a picture of a metal door and lock, in such incredible detail I stared and stared, until Baby Bonnie decided she’d like to start drawing on the walls rather than the paper provided.

It’s not ideal to go to a museum with small children (unless yours are considerably better behaved than mine) if all want to do is read every description and explanation. But nevertheless, it’s worth going back and back again for short visits.

The curators obviously make an effort to keep coming up with innovative ways of keeping at least part of it fresh, and it desperately needs its own detailed website to show just how much treasure we have in this town. We must keep visiting or it will be lost to our own children forever. How can we deny them their own history?

Leave a comment

Filed under Parenting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,