Family

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor So it’s the school holidays, the sun is shining and I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but if like me you live in Yorkshire, it’s the first chance you’ve had in ages to get the kids out in the garden for longer than 5 minutes before the hail, sleet and snow reappear. You throw open the back door and they run out enthusiastically, then what seems like milliseconds later they’re traipsing muddy...

By Ian Hunt, MD Gabbitas Education With former tutors including famous names such as H G Wells, Graeme Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Edward Elgar, Gabbitas is the oldest tutoring institution in the world. We have a rich and respected history in the world of tutoring and our clients have included British and European royalty as well as many, many families across the whole social spectrum. So you might be surprised to hear me compare tutoring to Botox; a fashionable cosmetic...

By Lucy Gill, Director of Apps and Technology at Fundamentally Children In the modern world most of us adults are never far away from a screen, whether that’s a mobile, tablet, computer screen or TV but are these devices suitable for children? Views on this are often polarised: should you believe the fear stories around the dangers of screen time or the ones that focus on their benefits? Where does the truth lie? If you start to look at the...

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor Has childhood changed such a lot since I was young 20 years ago? Alright, make that 30 years ago. The happiest of my early memories revolve around digging holes in the lawn, racing snails and finding frogs under the broken old door half-buried in our ‘wildlife area’. It was only recently that my dad admitted he made up that idea to avoid having to cut the grass down that end of the garden. Every autumn,...

By Shannon Edwards, CEO of www.styloko.com In my ideal working mum paradigm, there aren’t working mums and stay-at-home mums but instead ‘by definition’ all mums ‘work’ and some just take on a second job. Because there is no escaping the requirements inherent to the business of being a mother no matter how much support you have to pursue a ‘second’ career. Just because I’m a CEO doesn’t in any way free me from the constant and relentless to-do list chatter...

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor Screwed. Katherine (not her real name) sat down in a meeting room on her first day in the office after having a baby and was astonished to see that her back to work interview was being conducted by the person who had been covering her maternity leave. 'She sat down opposite me and slid a piece of paper over the table. At the top she had written her name next to the word "manager" and...

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor The World Health Organisation regards childhood obesity as one of the biggest global public health challenges of this century. The latest figures from the National Child Measurement programme show that over 33% of 10-11 year olds and 22% of 4-5 year olds are either obese or overweight. Public Health England has reported that in 5-7 year olds, 76% of boys and 77% of girls do not meet the government’s own physical activity recommendations. Stark figures. Barely...

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor Do they have elephants there? Will the baboons trash our car? Is it going to be like ‘Jurassic Park’? Are we nearly there yet??!! The kids were asleep in the back of the car and my husband was sick of my questions before we got off the M62. I’d managed to reach the ripe old age of 35 without ever visiting a safari park, but my husband was quite the veteran, having gone once with...

By Jasmine Stephens, Family Editor Every January my New Year’s resolution is to find a way to get fitter, but by March I’ve already conveniently forgotten the new trainers stashed in the porch. I like to think I am healthy enough to run for the bus, but the truth is I haven’t done any organised exercise since I left school in 1997 and was no longer forced to run around a muddy field while a sadistic PE teacher shouted words...