Diary of an (ex)London mum

I have been reding this book by Pamela Druckerman on the way to work and found it a really enjoyable read.   It was getting a bit boring reading 'how to parent' books which were largely prescriptive.  I found it refreshing to read about the problems that this particular new parent faced and how the solutions didn't always come from her personally, but rather from the people she met who had very different ideas about how to raise kids.  She wrote about her observations and what she learnt from other people and how she adapted what she found to suit her particular needs and ethics.  It is kind of what we have been doing with Baby; it was reassuring to read about someone who has done pretty much the same thing and had ended up with a good family life.  It seems to be that getting the balance between discipline and giving a child enough freedom to explore and develop at its own pace is the big parenting challenge.  It isn't always easy as we get so much...

We have been looking into schools for the past year or so, having been warned by friends that we should start looking well before school application time.  It was good advice in that there is quite a lot to consider and we had not really thought about what we would value as education for Baby.  Neither of us are religious even though we both attended Catholic schools as kids.  Although we acknowledge that the education provided by Christian schools are generally good, neither of us want to keep up the pretence of being something we are not just so that Baby could attend a 'good' school.  Lying to make one's life easier is not a lesson we want him to learn. We both love facts so we looked at the data available from Ofsted and came up with a list of schools that we would like to take a look at.    In the mean time we found out that the Christian schools have to offer a percentage of non-faith related places so we decided to include a few on our list of sch...

I occasionally receive chain emails, or social network versions of chain emails. They are no longer the regular ocurrences they used to be when I was young but I do still get them sometimes. I can't help but wonder whether the people who propagate them really believe that something bad will befall them if they didn't, or if the messages are just a way to tell their friends that they are thinking of them. I don't mind them even though they do distract from the already rich landscape of messages and information online. Other widely (re)circulated messages often involve health scares. I use the word 'scares' because mostly the information that is circulated has no scientific basis even though scientists are often quoted as having evidence in support of such claims. For example myths about microwave use abound, from cancer scares to, I just heard this morning, how microwaving food increases the salt content.  I am a scientist/professional sceptic of sort and criti...