Category: Lifestyle

I ask what you can actually do when faced with a public meltdown.

My two children are good, sweet-natured, kind little boys. Mostly. Every now and again they appear to momentarily channel some sort of demonic force from Dante's seventh circle of hell, usually in public and usually when I am on my own with them.

Our eldest, Harry, is four. He never really went through the terrible twos, so we smugly thought we were doing A-game parenting. Sadly, we were apparently just lucky, because now we are seeing some very challenging moments. Combined with two-year-old Olly's drive for independence, we are really being kept on our toes.

• Read the full article (Yahoo Mum Diary)

After 28 months of breastfeeding, I share the advice I wish I'd been given...

I love the NHS breastfeeding awareness posters and leaflets. Calm, serene mothers gaze peacefully down at beautiful babies, or laugh with friends as they both breastfeed on a park bench. I wish that had been me.

A more accurate poster might show a mum holding a newborn to a breast with one arm and using the other to change a toddler's nappy, or trying to load the dishwasher with the baby clamped in place.

• Read the full article (Yahoo UK)

I ask why 'baby on board' signs seem to wind drivers up so much...

In the back of my scruffy, mum-wagon Vauxhall hangs a sweet caterpillar in rainbow colours, warning other road users that I have a 'Baby On Board'.

It's been there since the day we drove our first baby home from hospital - crawling at about 15 miles an hour and stopping every few minutes to check Harry was still actually breathing.

• Read the full article (Yahoo Mum Diary)

Thirty years ago today, a convoy of between 500 and 600 new age travellers left a campsite they'd illegally occupied on the Earl of Cardigan's land. They were heading towards Stonehenge for an outlawed celebration of the summer solstice when they were stopped by a police roadblock. The convoy turned into a field, at which point around 1,300 police descended upon them and a violent confrontation took place.

If you had bought certain newspapers the following day you would have learnt that the field had been full of heavily-armed social deviants. If you had watched the BBC at the time, you would have heard that the police had been attacked by anarchists wielding wooden blocks, rocks and even petrol bombs. But if you'd been there you may have had a different story to tell. Unfortunately, no-one was interested.

• Read the full article (politics.co.uk)

Parents are pressured into spending too much time playing with their children.

New parents face a near-constant barrage of well-meaning clichés and advice. "It all goes so fast," people will sigh. "They won't be little forever," grannies coo. "Treasure every moment," parents of older children will murmur, conveniently forgetting all those times they had to leave their room to scream into a pillow over their toddler's refusal to dress in anything other than socks and a Spiderman mask that day.

But at least those comments are well-meaning - there's one phrase in particular that gets trotted out again and again, and it makes me really cross: "The housework can wait." Wait for what?!

• Read the full article (Yahoo Mum Diary)

A former university lecturer's life was sent into a tailspin when she discovered her successful son was really at the centre of an ecstasy-selling ring. But she insists she's still proud.

Barbara Attwood was incredibly proud of her son Shaun. He had finished university with a first class degree, moved to America, got a job in the incredibly competitive world of stockbroking and had a huge house with a swimming pool. There was nothing to worry about; he was clearly a success.

Then one night, comfortably watching Coronation Street with her daughter, she received a phone call that turned everything on its head. Shaun had been arrested. He hadn't been to work in months. He had been caught running a vast drugs ring. He was looking at a sentence of 200 years in a US prison.

• Read the full article (Yahoo UK)