There are plenty of other places that offer extra-curricular activities for your children to enjoy at evenings or weekends or during school holidays. Try checking at your local sports centre for gymnastics, archery, dance, football or other sports clubs and of course swimming lessons are normally available at local authority pools or at pools attached to adult gyms. There are also things like Rainbows (from age 5) and Brownies, Beavers (from age 6) and Cubs, and other activities like ballet, horse riding, music lessons and majorettes or cadets.

The wide variety of classes that are available, though, can make parents feel as though they ought to enrol their child in as many as their child is interested in and wants to attend. Ears ringing from the warnings about childhood obesity and screen-based entertainment, many parents feel that it is vital for their children to go to such activities.

And that’s fine – to a degree. There is such a thing as ‘too much of a good thing’ though and having too many clubs, classes and interests on the go can mean too little time spent as a family (and an awful lot of money being spent), or just relaxing after a hard day at school.

Your child needs time in an evening to switch off and relax, talk to you about their day, watch a bit of TV and just unwind. They also need time to complete their homework. If they have clubs more than three times a week then they may not have time for these things, or they’ll be too tired on their free evenings to do anything productive.

This does depend on the individual child, of course, and no-one will know their child better than its parents. But parents shouldn’t feel pressured into sending their children to more clubs than they have time for or think is good for them. If there are a few different things you want your child to try, you could stagger them so that they do, say, a term of one activity and then a term of another. That can be hard, though, if there are waiting lists involved, so think carefully about what your child would enjoy the most (rather than what you think they should do – the point of these activities is to allow your child to enjoy themselves whilst learning something new!).

If you’re considering enrolling your child in an extra-curricular activity (or ten!) then think about the cost, how the activity will affect your child’s abilities and confidence in themselves, how much time you’re willing to put in to chauffeuring them around, whether the activity is age-appropriate (or should you wait until they’re older to get the most benefit out of it) and how will homework be affected (and will it make them tired for school the next day, especially if it starts and finishes late).

People asked to rate their weight according to ‘normal’ ‘overweight’ ‘obese’ or ‘morbidly obese’ categories often ‘downgrade’ their weight to the lower category. So someone who is obese might consider themselves to be overweight.

Nowhere is the epidemic more obvious – and more sad – than amongst our children. Gone are the days when perhaps one child in a school was overweight and teased for it. Now, most classes have at least a third of their pupils who are overweight or obese.

Amongst very young children, the only people who can be at fault are their parents. Those children cannot shop for themselves and do not take themselves to the sweet shop, chip shop or fast-food restaurant. They might ask for those foods if they see them advertised, but their parents are the ones who buy that type of food for them.

As children get older they make more choices for themselves. If they have not been educated on the importance of making the right choices (and what those choices should be) then they will continue to eat unhealthy food and continue to increase in weight.

Parents who feel unable to say ‘no’ to their children and refuse their demands for unhealthy food in turn blame the fast-food industry, blaming attractive advertising of junk food for the fact that their children are getting fat.
In a survey by the Children’s Food Trust of around 1,000 parents, around 750 of them said that they had bought unhealthy food for their children including crisps, chocolate and sweets because of ‘pressure’ to do so. Some 650 of those surveyed said that they would like food that is high in fat, salt and sugar to be banned from being advertised before the 9pm watershed.

At the moment, advertisers are prevented from promoting such food during programmes aimed at children, but do advertise during ‘family’ programmes aired in the early evening.

Another problem identified by the survey was that many children’s menus at restaurants are of the ‘chicken nuggets and chips’ variety, with little by way of healthy options. Ninety per cent of the parents surveyed said that they want to see healthy options on children’s menus, and many of those would prefer children to just be able to have smaller portions of the adult meals on the menu.

Children’s Food Trust chairman Rob Rees said, “Parents have such a tough job to encourage their children to eat healthily – and what’s clear is that they think there are lots of ways we could make their lives easier. This isn’t about a ‘nanny state’ – it’s about what will help rather than hinder parents in feeding their children well. If we’re serious about reducing the crippling costs to the NHS of poor diet, we need to get behind parents on this.”
Or perhaps parents just need to learn to say ‘no’ to their children more often, and explain their decisions.

My car had a feature that allowed me to turn off the airbag on the front passenger seat side, but I was rather paranoid that my car would be the one in a million that would still deploy its airbag in an accident even if it were de-activated. Airbags plus child seats are, of course, utterly dangerous and often fatal. So he stayed in the back even though he would have been far happier in the front (he tended to cry after ten minutes or so if he couldn’t see me).

This week in the news there has been mention of a revolutionary new type of baby seat that, had it been around when my son was tiny, I would have snapped up in an instant. It’s called a ‘Carkoon’ because, in the event of the car impacting with something, it cocoons the baby within it, protecting it from harm.

It’s been made by a British firm. It is rear-facing and the sliding hard shell that deploys in a crash is made of Kevlar (the same stuff police vests are made of in America) and Normex, which is a fireproof material that can keep a baby safe for up to 18 minutes in a blaze. I just realised I never thought about a fire when my baby was small… Sometimes you don’t want to even think about some things.

Anyway, all the protection is backed up by the fact that in the event of a crash, a transmitter tells emergency services that there has been a crash and gives a GPS location so that they can be found. Wow. And if there is an accident, there’s no need to have that panicky grabbing and pulling of seatbelts to release the baby, since the pod has a quick-release handle.

The reason the Carkoon came into existence was that its inventor, Julian Preston-Powers, was told by a fireman about a failed attempt to release a baby from a burning car, a truly horrific event.

Mr Preston-Powers said of him and his company Cool Technology, “We thought to ourselves; what if there isn’t a firefighter there at all? There must be a way to protect the child from fire. Smoke is difficult thing to deal with as well but the car seat does cocoon around the child so it prevents smoke it seeping in.”

As an added bonus, it also protects babies from things that might be flying around the car in the event of a crash which could injure them if they were hit.

The Carkoon will fit in any car that has an Isofix socket system and is expected to sell from next Spring for around £500.

Bruce, 57, and Emma, 33, have been married for three years and are ‘overjoyed’ at their new arrival. Mabel Ray was born weighing a hefty 9lb 1oz in Los Angeles. The choice of the rather old-fashioned English name (which means ‘loveable’) has raised a few eyebrows but it is rather tame compared to several of the more ridiculous baby names given to the offspring of celebrities.

The couple had known that they were expecting a girl, having announced as much in October last year. Mabel is Bruce’s fourth child – he has three daughters to ex-wife Demi Moore who are now age 23 (Rumer), 20 (Scout) and 18 (Tallulah). Presumably Mabel is rather relieved to have a different mum who has insisted on a rather more mainstream name.

The couple were happy to be together whether or not they had children together. Previously, Bruce has been quoted as saying, “I’d like to have a thousand more children, or zero more children. It doesn’t matter. Emma makes me feel great.”

Of his marriage to Emma, he said, “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and this comes after a long period of being kind of lonely, eve though I tried to convince myself I was enjoying life. Before I met Emma I was very pessimistic about finding that special woman with whom I would want to spend my life with. I thought it would be difficult for someone like me, who is well known, to find a woman who didn’t have an agenda and who just wanted to be with me because they loved me, pure and simple.”

Meanwhile Demi Moore is dealing with rumours that her most recent ex, Ashton Kutcher, is having a relationship with Rihanna.

This problem is becoming so severe that dentists are being asked to give advice to parents to use toothpaste designed for adults on their young children.

Toothpaste designed for adults typically has 1450– 1650ppm (parts per million) of fluoride to help to protect our teeth from cavities. The previous advice for children under the age of about 6 is to use toothpaste that has 1000ppm in areas where there is no fluoride in the tap water or lower in areas where fluoride is added to the tap water. That information is easy to find on the back of any tube of toothpaste.

Too much fluoride causes fluoridosis, which is staining of the teeth. Parents are being told to use adult toothpaste on their children’s teeth despite of this risk because it is less harmful than the risk posed by decay (which can be reduced or prevented through the use of fluoride).

So what is it that we are doing to our children’s teeth that is making them so rotten that dentists are having to advise the greater use of fluoride?

Firstly, parents aren’t brushing their children’s teeth early enough or for long enough. You should brush your child’s teeth from the moment the first one appears when they are a baby, and you should keep brushing your child’s teeth until they are about age 7 years, by which time they will have the necessary co-ordination and skill to adequately brush them for themselves.

Ideally, from about the age of three years, you should give your child’s teeth a proper brush and then let them have a brush too. They will need this practice over a long time to learn how to brush properly. If you allow them to brush their teeth on their own before then, there will be teeth that are missed or not brushed properly.

Another major cause of decay is over-use of baby bottles. Milk contains lactose which is a sugar. Sugar causes decay and cavities. Giving your child a bottle of milk to suck to soothe them to sleep or just to keep them quiet increases the amount of sugar that goes onto their teeth. Juice is just as bad, of course. Only give your child milk at mealtimes, and otherwise only give them water to drink. If you live in a hard-water area, consider buying a cheap water filter because they can improve the taste. If you give your young child juice they will not grow up wanting water.

Avoid dummies if you can, but if you can’t then wean your baby off them from one year old – any later than that will lead to teeth-alignment problems. If your baby can walk, they are too old for a dummy.

Finally, if your child needs regular medicine (e.g. for asthma), make sure to brush their teeth after each dose. Allow your child to drink some water to rinse away the medicine first and then brush because many medicines contain high amounts of sugar.

If your child has been assessed as requiring speech therapy, what will be involved?
It rather depends on the nature of the problem that has caused the speech and language difficulties. It may be that their oral-motor skills are under developed and need specific exercises to practice in order to make all the necessary sounds for speech. These exercises are something that you could help your child to practice at home – getting them to pull ‘funny faces’ in front of a mirror, for example. The mouth has muscles just like the rest of the body and exercising them will help them to develop a ‘memory’ so that they can form the right movements again when needed.

A speech therapist might agree that a child cannot pronounce certain sounds, or cannot put words into an understandable form, but may advise you that certain sounds simply don’t come until the child is older. Saying two consonants together at the start of a word (like ‘cl-ock’) is something that children of four years could struggle with, so if your two year old finds them hard then the speech therapist might be able to reassure you that the sounds will come with time.

Even well-meaning speech therapists can make you feel like a terrible parent sometimes. They may ‘teach’ you how to talk to your child – getting down on their level, speaking more slowly or with simplified language. If you are given this advice but are already doing these things as a matter of course then make sure you tell the therapist so that they can consider alternative means of supporting your child’s development.

If it is language, rather than speech with which your child is struggling then the therapist will need to establish exactly what is wrong. Is the child receiving the information (listening properly) but not processing it (not understanding)? Or is the child not receiving the information (is there a hearing problem?). Or are they receiving and processing correctly but not being able to reproduce it (speak)? Once the difficulty is understood then the therapist can advise on what therapy can be undertaken to improve.

The speech therapist will compare your child’s abilities with those that would be expected within a range for their age. They use standard tests and assessments that they turn into games so that the child doesn’t think that they are being tested. If you are not happy with the therapy offered or progress being made, do not be afraid to ask for another therapist. Some therapists simply don’t go into schools, for instance, and so ask for another when your child reaches school age.

That said, if you are aware of what is ‘normal’ for a child to be doing at a given age, it is easier to spot if there is a problem that might need help. Most delays in development won’t need intervention – most children with a delay will catch up in time.

Speech development is an area of concern for many parents who are eagerly awaiting their babies’ first words. Here is a summary of what children ‘should’ be able to do at different ages. If you feel that your child is not developing in line with these norms then your first step is to speak to your GP or Health Visitor who can refer you to a Speech Therapist. They will not usually do so until your child is at least two years old, which can be a frustrating wait if you feel that your child needs help. The Speech Therapist will assess your child and probably offer a block of a few sessions to see how they develop before considering a further plan of action.

Under 1 year:
Babies will make cooing and babbling noises and from around 9 months will make two-syllabic noises (which may include ‘dada’ or ‘mama’ – these are not necessarily linked to the parents, they are just sounds that the baby is enjoying linking together).
They may recognise names of objects (e.g. look toward the pet dog on hearing the word ‘dog’) and react to noises.

12 – 18 months:
They will have lots of consonants in their noise (e.g. s, a, t, p, b, n, d) and start to copy noises and words. They might say an occasional word of their own, like ‘ball’. They should understand more than they can say – e.g. they may not be able to say ‘coat’ but will understand that they need to get their coat on when asked.

18 months – 2 years:
Toddlers of this age will generally be able to say 20 – 50 words. They will be just starting to link two words together, like ‘choc yum’. They should be able to name many common objects and follow commands with two elements (e.g. ‘get the ball and give it to me’). mmon objects, common pictured objects, indicate body parts on self when labeled, and follow two-step commands (such as “Please pick up the toy and give it to me”).

2 – 3 years:
They should be able to combine three words together to make a sentence that makes sense and should understand concepts like ‘under’ and ‘on’ and also be able to identify different colours.

Speech difficulties are many and varied. If a speech difficulty is undiagnosed or untreated, it cans cause huge frustration for a child and curb their abilities in the classroom (since they can’t express all that they may know, they may be classed as being of lower ability and become bored and frustrated as a result). Interestingly, the prison population and the population in Pupil Referral Units (where children are sent to be educated if they are excluded from a school and not accepted elsewhere) have a high percentage of people who have had undiagnosed speech difficulties in their youth.

That is not to say, of course, that a child with speech difficulties will end up bored, frustrated, truant and incarcerated. No, not if they have supportive family and teachers who recognise their difficulties and accommodate them.

Asking a young child with a speech difficulty a question like, “What’s that colour?” when they can’t tell you can lead you to think that they don’t know their colours. Ask them “Can you point to the blue one?” can let a child show you what he knows.

If your child gets to the age of 2 years old and is not speaking so that others can understand him, he can be referred to speech therapy. However, as a parent you will probably have known for some time before then that there is something amiss (particularly if your child is otherwise bright and their lack of speech is anathema) so by the age of 2 years you will have been pulling your hair out wanting help that isn’t forthcoming. This is on the basis that many children just don’t talk until the age of 2, so not talking before that age is not deemed ‘abnormal’.

There are several possible causes of speech delay or defects. They can include temporary ones like glue ear (which can be resolved by the insertion of grommets, though the time waiting for this procedure, particularly if your child has frequent colds and has been without proper hearing for a long time, can mean that they effectively have to re-learn their language and this can be a slow process), or long-term ones like speech dyspraxia (which is a problem with co-ordinating the muscles of the mouth, tongue, lips and voice/air flow). There can be physical causes, like a cleft palate or being tongue-tied (having a short frenulum, beneath the tongue, which prohibits its free movement). It can also be part of a global developmental delay, which may be clear from other aspects of the child’s development (like slowness to move, lack of eye contact or interest in the world).

Next week, we will summarise the ‘normal’ pattern of speech acquisition, and the role of speech therapists.

Anyway, what about this research into the sugar content of cereal, then?

Independent consumer watchdog, Which? surveyed the nutritional value of fifty various breakfast cereals on sale in the UK. They looked at shops’ own-brands and named brands, and found that 32 of the 50 surveyed contained ‘high’ levels of sugar, and that 86% (12 out of 14) of the cereals aimed at children had ‘excessive’ levels of sugar added to them. On the plus side, the levels of salt has decreased over recent years.

Which? also found that the weight of a serving varied between brands and cereal types, so that it would be hard for a consumer to compare how much salt, sugar etc. would be contained in bowls of different types of cereal.

Whilst many cereals boast proudly of the amount of added vitamins and minerals they contain (which do make them a good part of a balanced diet, especially as they contain iron which can be hard to fit into a child’s diet if they are a fussy eater), they are not so forthcoming about their sugar content.

Of the 14 cereals marketed towards children, only Kellogg’s Rice Krispies (which had a ‘medium’ level of sugar) and Weetabix (which had a ‘low’ level of sugar) did not contain high levels of sugar. The worst offender, in terms of the amount of sugar contained, was Kellogg’s Frosties (37% of which is sugar…), followed swiftly by various shops’ own-brand versions of Coco Pops (36% sugar) and Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and Coco Pops and Honey Monster Sugar Puffs (35% sugar).

Which? recommends that cereal producers should make a wider range of healthy cereals, and make their nutritional content obvious (such as with the traffic light system used on other food types, on the front of the box).

As well as the risk of tooth decay, diabetes and obesity, giving high-sugar cereals to children makes them develop a taste for them, so that cereals with low levels of sugar become unpalatable to them. They’re still healthier, overall, than a fried breakfast, but if your child insists on the sugary brands then alternate them with other breakfasts like boiled egg and toast, or porridge sweetened with fresh fruit.

But pick up an actual traditional storybook and you might be surprised at the level of gore, treachery, threat and violence in those stories and think twice about reading them to your own children.

You wouldn’t be alone – apparently, one in five parents (in a sample of 2,000) report that they don’t read traditional stories to their children because they deem them ‘too scary’. Instead, they turn to more modern classics, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Room on the Broom.

Stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson are classics and most people buy them on the basis that they are familiar tales that they heard when they were little. Many modern takes on the tales are adapted slightly (so that, for example, the first two little pigs are not eaten by the wolf but are able to flee to their brother’s house made of brick where they are all safe), but others remain true to their rather gruesome originals.

The parents who were interviewed said that they wouldn’t read their children the stories of Rapunzel or Rumpelstiltskin because of the fear of ‘kidnapping and executions’. Meanwhile, a third of parents reported that their child had cried when the grandma in Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by the wolf.

It’s fair to say that trying to impart moral righteousness on your child is rather hard when reading stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks is portrayed as the protagonist, and yet she broke into someone’s house, stole and broke property. Trying to find the words to explain that yes, Jack is the goody in the story, but yes he also sneaks into a castle and steals from a giant, is also rather difficult. The original stories were perhaps intended to frighten children into behaving (don’t go into a stranger’s house, it might belong to bears who will eat you up if they catch you!) but that is perhaps at odds with more modern methods of parenting, when we try to teach children right from wrong by example rather than threat…