A leading head teacher has said that labelling children the Covid generation is “catastrophising” and blighting them.
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She might be singing nursery rhymes or helping a child to learn the alphabet. While it sounds like an average day for a nanny, there is a difference. Danielle Manton-Kelly is not in the room with the children: she is a Zoomsitter, an online nanny, and she is one of a growing breed.
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My daughter is back at school and touch wood, there haven’t been any cases of Covid at her school yet. They have cameras in each of the classrooms, so girls in quarantine at home, can join in lessons. However several independent and state schools in London have put entire year groups or individual classes into quarantine, several days after starting back. We have friends with daughters currently confined to home school as a result.
Whatever happens at Westminster, the prime minister knows closing schools again would be political suicide.
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Parents should avoid leaving blanks on their children’s school application forms since they risk being assigned to the least popular school in the area, according to experts.
Calling for an overhaul to simplify the system, the Good Schools Guide said parents were forced to conduct labour-intensive research and fill in reams of paperwork during a process that “no doubt favours certain sections of society”.
It notes that there is significant variation in school admission policies, with individual schools demanding different information and using different criteria for admitting pupils. The Local Government Association (LGA) has called for a review to make the system more inclusive.
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Grown children going back to live in the family house cost parents an average of £5,000 a year extra, with sons tending to cost more than daughters, pension advisers say.
Government statistics show that there are a million more young adults aged 20 to 34 living with their parents than there were 15 years ago.
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A director at the world’s most successful strategic consulting firm has brought the data-mining techniques of her day job to a decision with which many parents wrestle: how to help offspring choose a university course.
Tera Allas, director of research and economics at McKinsey and a self-confessed geek, said that it came as “no surprise” to her family when she launched a fact-based analysis and created a “prioritisation algorithm” to help her daughter weigh up courses.
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Increasing numbers of parents with young children are seeking help from professional coaches over screen time “battles” with their “addicted” offspring, experts said.
Device use has become the heart of many family rows, with some parents complaining of “triple-screening” — youngsters simultaneously viewing a television, laptop and smartphone.
Coaches say that occupational therapists they work with are worried that children are not learning simple resilience from climbing trees or running around outside, with some starting school unable to hold a pencil properly.
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Using "time outs" to discipline children is not going to harm them or your relationship with them, US research suggests.
Despite criticism of the "naughty step" strategy, children's anxiety did not increase and neither did their aggressive behaviour, the eight-year study of families found.
But a UK psychologist said the key was how the technique was used.
And not all children responded to authoritarian forms of discipline.
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