Author Archives: admin

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I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles

Yes it’s that sim­ple song which is near­ly 90 years old! But I was think­ing more about actu­al­ly blow­ing bub­bles. When my chil­dren were very young I found a fan­tas­tic big bub­ble mak­er. You had a buck­et of soap mix out­side and they could run around the gar­den mak­ing big bub­bles and long bub­bles â€“ […]

Taking the ‘mal’ out of malnutrition

Whoops! – Where does that leave me writ­ing my blog at ‘mal’-ipunations!!! What are ‘ipunations’ any­way? Phew! I think it’s OK because malipuna­tions is just a made up word!  A recent British study sug­gests that with ris­ing obe­si­ty rates mil­lions of Britons may also be suf­fer­ing from ‘mal’-nutrition. The pre­fix ‘mal’ in ‘mal’-nutrition is from the […]

Back to the future?

I am cur­rent­ly read­ing “Neill of Sum­mer­hill – the Per­ma­nent Rebel” by Jonathan Croall. I don’t know how much of A. S. Neill’s work and phi­los­o­phy I under­stood when I was at col­lege in the late 60’s/early 70’s. What I do know is that I’ve known for a long time, as did he, that infants […]

Food for thought #2

Have you heard?  Chi­na exe­cut­ed a for­mer direc­tor of its food and drug agency yes­ter­day. Does any­one know if we get any ingre­di­ents for our vac­cines from Chi­na? One US fam­i­ly tried to live for a whole year with­out buy­ing any­thing that was import­ed from Chi­na. The wife even wrote a book about their expe­ri­ence. Her children […]

Happiness – it’s right under your nose!

I sup­pose we all hope for hap­pi­ness in our lives. We cer­tain­ly wish it for our chil­dren. But hap­pi­ness is an intan­gi­ble thing. We see peo­ple laugh but are they real­ly hap­py? Can you be hap­py and nev­er smile or laugh? For some years I have known a man who obvi­ous­ly appre­ci­ates life and his family. […]

Getting warmer

No, this doesn’t refer to glob­al warm­ing.  I’m talk­ing about two recent spec­u­la­tive reports on ‘causes of autism’ I picked up on line. The first is that there might be a link between low lev­els of Vit­a­min D and autism. Appar­ent­ly there is a rela­tion­ship between Vit­a­min D and brain devel­op­ment. They’re def­i­nite­ly get­ting warmer with […]

Quirks of fate make life better.

In March I picked up an old friend at the air­port. She is Catholic East Indi­an by cul­ture, Cana­di­an by cit­i­zen­ship. We first met in the US when our old­est chil­dren were 4 years old and attend­ing a part-time pre-school pro­gramme – she was the class­room aide. Since my broth­er in Eng­land had just start­ed going […]

What are your priorities?

Have you made a list of your pri­or­i­ties in life? I’ve gone through my life with pri­or­i­ties, I’ve just nev­er writ­ten them down. In my 20’s my pri­or­i­ty was to own an Eng­lish cot­tage or small house in the coun­try­side but at the same time close to a creek where I could sail my boat. I just […]

24 hours a week with love

I have long thought and known from expe­ri­ence that it only takes 24 hours a week to make a dif­fer­ence with a devel­op­men­tal­ly delayed child.  Most espe­cial­ly the same qual­i­ty 24 hours a week giv­en to any child from the time they are 4 months of age (ear­li­er if pos­si­ble) will ensure that a child […]

Writing – 4 months and counting

I’ve been a con­scious writer for over 10 years.  By say­ing ‘conscious’ I mean that I actu­al­ly have files and note­books in which I’ve kept writ­ten ideas, per­spec­tives and philoso­phies about my own life, the lives of young chil­dren and oth­er peo­ple’s lives.  I’ve been con­scious­ly blog­ging live for 4 months! Yikes! As a ther­a­peu­tic tool I […]