4 HRS AGO - A review of a family holiday to Richardson's Hemsby Beach Holiday Park in Norfolk, including the Platinum 2 Lodge Spa accomodation and onsite facilities. Collapse

2 DAYS AGO - A little dust-up between cousins at nappy-change time is a reminder of the real virtues of familyIt wasn’t a particularly hard smack. His fists are small, doughy things; fat and soft with dimples for knuckles, sunken into the flesh like the buttons of a sofa cushion. But it was a low blow, against his own cousin, and while she was having her nappy changed, no less. Even the most unreasonable prize fighter would never hit an opponent while they were lying down and, though I’ve never checked, I imagine that rule would count doubly if they were having their arse cleaned.We had taken the boy to stay with his cousins, Ardal and Nora, last week. My son is the baby of the entire family, so all his cousins fawn over him, despite being only negligibly older themselves. At just under two, Nora is the second youngest, an incorrigibly sweet-natured girl with a blazing smile and a mop of tight blonde curls, yet she acts like she’s never seen something so delightfully childish as my son in her Collapse

4 DAYS AGO - Adjusting your behaviour to each new wrinkle in the science is a mug’s gameIs too much screen time bad for your kids? Don’t look to this column for an answer. The truth is, nobody knows. The unceasing pendulum of lifestyle advice is currently swinging through a “debunking” phase, with numerous articles insisting it’s all been a big panic over nothing. But that’s partly because a report published earlier this year, by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said there wasn’t enough evidence to give firm guidelines to parents. As the paediatricians explained, though, the key problem is that sufficient high-quality research has yet to be conducted – a conclusion that somehow got turned into this headline, on the parenting website Motherly: “How harmful is screen time for kids? Not as bad as we may think”. The article was sponsored by the US mobile company Verizon – though science has yet to inform us if this was a matter of causation or merely correlation.Of course, there are Collapse

5 DAYS AGO - A mum has shared the advice she received from medical professionals about using infrared thermometers Collapse

6 DAYS AGO - Readers respond to the launch of the NHS Every Mind Matters campaign and share their thoughts on other mental health issuesCongratulations to Suzanne Moore for highlighting those who are forgotten in campaigns such as Every Mind Matters (Telling people to jog will not solve this mental health crisis, 8 October). When Jeremy Hunt spoke of the biggest expansion of mental health services in Europe, he referred to expanded provision for people with mild to moderate problems. Those with serious mental heath problems have found that there is no therapy for them, specialist services like assertive outreach have disappeared, and their community mental health teams are too busy managing crises to support them.I work with people who regularly self-harm and feel suicidal. Because the NHS has a tendency to keep them out of services and ignore NICE guidelines aimed at helping them, they find themselves the subjects of reports such as “No Longer A Diagnosis of Exclusion” and “The Patients Collapse

6 DAYS AGO - Some of the plants mentioned in this post were gifts from Tree2MyDoor I bloody love houseplants. Some women have shoes, I have houseplants. I just did a little count around the house and I currently have 42, about a third of which I’ve cultivated from cuttings, which I feel rather smug about. I have everything from tiny pilea babies, newly separated from their mummy, to huge Swiss cheese plants, the largest of which is currently sat in my old cat litter tray (litter removed) until I find a pot big enough for it. My oldest houseplant is a peace lily that I bought when Bee was small and we lived alone for the first time, making it about 23 years old now and I even got an avocado stone to sprout… The post 4 reasons (that aren’t about Instagram) to keep more houseplants appeared first on Slummy single mummy. 4 reasons (that aren’t about Instagram) to keep more houseplants was first posted on October 9, 2019 at 9:55 am. Collapse

7 DAYS AGO - The children’s author on why she made her now grownup eponymous character more successful in lifeWhen the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson met a group of care leavers in Scotland late last year, something magical happened.Wilson was already in the middle of writing a new novel about Tracy Beaker, the eponymous hero of four best-selling books about a fierce and funny girl living in a fictional children’s home. Tracy is now in her 30s and with a daughter of her own. Wilson says that talking to some real-life care leavers about Tracy helped her to see her famous character from a new perspective. Related: How Tracy Beaker turned out: Jacqueline Wilson on the return of her most famous creation Related: My parents at war: Jacqueline Wilson opens up about unhappy early life Continue reading... Collapse

07/10/2019 - Everything I See I Swallow raises challenging questions about how we bring up girls. The women behind a new shibari show speak outA young woman is strung up above the stage, a delicate lattice of red ropes criss-crossing the bare skin on her thighs and ribs, leaving an exposed patchwork of flesh. It’s the startling opening of Everything I See I Swallow, a show that won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh festival this summer, a two-hander devised by actors and aerialists Maisy Taylor (the suspended woman) and Tamsin Shasha with director Helen Tennison.What Taylor is demonstrating is the art of shibari, the centuries-old practice of Japanese rope bondage, which began as an elaborate way for samurai to restrain their captives and has evolved into an erotic art. Your first thoughts might be: this seems like a niche interest. But it’s the spark for a piece of theatre that speaks to something universal and pressing, about the rights of women over their own bodies, the ramifications of digital Collapse

07/10/2019 - Advertisement feature in association with Local Heroes I was the ripe old age of 38 before I bought my first house. I’d put it off for a long time, partly because I didn’t think I could afford it, (I was right on that one for quite some time), but also through fear. Growing up we mainly lived in rented houses, and so I’d never really had any experience of how owning a home worked. ‘Call the landlord’ was all I knew as a response to any kind of house related problem, and the focus was always on not staining the carpets or doing anything that might mean not getting your deposit back, rather than actually thinking about designing and creating a space that you wanted to live in. When I thought of… The post 77 things to check before you buy your first home appeared first on Slummy single mummy. 77 things to check before you buy your first home was first posted on October 7, 2019 at 1:37 pm. Collapse