Storms upon us, winter raging and the Christmas countdown on, the temptation can be strong, indeed:  to batten down the hatches; to hibernate and hide away; to spend the festive season inside. The weather outside is frightful? Let it snow… Close the curtains, turn up the fire and turn on the TV. Social media forever...Read More

We have written – more than once in the past – about social media, and its impact upon our children’s mental health. It is a topic that troubles us a great deal here, hence our repeated posts. For all our musings on the matter, the surface has been but scratched. That much has been made...Read More

“If adults are to learn one thing from this report, it should be as follows. This is not a snowflake generation. It is a heroic generation.” – Dame Rachel de Souza DBE. Children’s Commissioner for England, 2021. Back in March, the Children’s Commissioner’s office embarked on an ambitious undertaking.  The purpose?  To ‘hear the voices...Read More

Smacking children; it’s a divisive topic and, to many, an outdated notion. Both in Wales and Scotland, it’s an illegal act, yet here in England it’s a greyer area altogether. Smacking might be considered questionable from a moral perspective, but from a legal standpoint it can still be justified as ‘reasonable chastisement’. Boundaries, let’s not...Read More

‘It’s good to talk…’ This was, in the mid-to-late 1990s, a ubiquitous slogan used in a popular BT advertising campaign. In making this point, we’re showing our age, although that concerns us not. For be it back in the nineties, when an award-winning advert first aired on television screens across the United Kingdom, or now,...Read More

First the good news: Teenagers and adolescents have begun to turn their backs on smoking, drinking and drugs. Young people classed as belonging to Generation Z – those born during the post-Millennial period, that is – are demonstrating clear behavioural changes that are to be applauded. Smoking in adolescence?  Down from 9% to 5% (compared...Read More

Lockdown is easing, the UK starting to reopen closed doors and life looking a little more normal once again. Spring is in the air and the sun is shining. Easter behind us, children back at school, and summer on the horizon and looming large. The reasons for optimism ought to be abundant. But still… For...Read More

Sam Holness has a superpower.  It makes him different, not like the other athletes. It gives him, he believes, an edge, a strength that he plans to put to good use as he strives to realise his sporting dreams. That edge? That strength? That superpower? It’s autism. Sam was three when the diagnosis was made,...Read More

Feeling helpless. Victimhood. Disengagement.  For obvious reasons, such feelings are commonplace at the current time, more than ever perhaps, such is life in lockdown, the COVID crisis leaving us all grasping for control, unable to do much more than tread water and await our respective fates. Such feelings then are, to a certain extent, inevitable;...Read More