15 HRS AGO - Former couples disagree about where their children should stay, with some trying to get their ex sent to jailCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageLawyers have been inundated with inquiries from divorced parents arguing about where their children should stay during the lockdown, with some trying to get their former partners sent to jail for breaking existing custody arrangements.Some parents have been using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to stop their ex from seeing their children, withholding access on spurious grounds including “my ex won’t be able to teach my child their times table”. Continue reading... Collapse

2 DAYS AGO - My special skill is writing at length – and so I have been working on my daughter’s letter to Boris Johnson and advising my son on Shakespeare. Neither are happy about it“It is important,” said an email from the headteacher of the secondary school my eldest attends, “to maintain the distinction of the holidays.” I have never agreed more with any human being.Thanks to Easter, homeschooling is out for two weeks, which means living the same life, only with less guilt and fewer arguments at 10am over whether 9am is a good time to start. Damn right, this is an important distinction. Continue reading... Collapse

5 DAYS AGO - A man is refusing to do any chores around the house until his wife's children help too after becoming frustrated they don't do simple things like 'clean plates or even flush Collapse

7 DAYS AGO - The new episodes are a refresher on how to be creative while cooped up with kids. They might even make you nostalgic for the school run ... Amid a pandemic and on the brink of lockdown, there’s one group of people celebrating this week: the producers of the Australian television sensation Bluey, who nabbed their first International Emmy – the kids: preschool category – in New York on Tuesday night.In a statement to the media, Daley Pearson – the executive producer of the show and director of Ludo Studio – praised the team behind it: “They’ve created a beautiful show celebrating one of the most important things: imagination and game play.”We won! https://t.co/nWRkaATxpL Related: Bluey: how Australia fell in love with a cartoon blue heeler puppy and her family Related: There is evidence Bluey can teach you how to be a better parent | Koa Whittingham, Amy Mitchell and Ben Mitchell Continue reading... Collapse

31/03/2020 - There were days when fear threatened to crush both of us. In these tough times I’d like to pass on some tools for survivalNone of us know how to do this. In many ways the fact that we are all struggling together gives us the chance to be open about how hard this is. The whole world is being asked to change, to distance ourselves, to hibernate, with little chance to prepare. There are many who have lost jobs. Many of us face sickness. None of us know how to do this. You are not the only one who is scared. We are all suffering from some level of adjustment disorder.I can’t speak with authority about the way governments and societies will meet these enormous challenges but I can offer a tiny personal roadmap for coping with really tough times. I scratched it out during a camping trip that was absolute hell. The next bit is hard, because the location of the camping trip turns everyone off, but stick with me. I want to pass on some simple tools for survival during times when everything Collapse

29/03/2020 - Occasionally, someone will remember some couples live separately and issue a hasty instruction that they should move in together. It’s time for us all to try to love the ones we are withThere were a couple of hours, between Boris Johnson’s lockdown announcement and the publication of the document giving more detail, when it was not at all clear whether the children of separated parents would be able to move between them. I did not freak out. I could walk them over with the dog, and the right of a dog to a walk is respected all over the world. Once it was established by the World Health Organization that they couldn’t transmit the virus, quarantine became a moot point for the species, which was a crazy upside-down world, since previously I had never seen the word “quarantine”, except attached to the word “dog”. Yes, that’s right, WHO let the dogs out.My ex doesn’t have a dog, but figured he could borrow one. “It’s quite grumpy,” I said, “do you think it would walk 1.4 miles?” He had Collapse

29/03/2020 - The sons and daughters of John Wayne, John Lennon, Caitlyn Jenner and others tell us what it was like to grow up with a world-famous dadA lot of the happy memories of my father are from the late 1960s at Kenwood, the old Tudor house we had in Surrey, when I was a little boy. Without knowing it, I probably saw some of the greatest musicians in the world come and go through that house. Continue reading... Collapse

29/03/2020 - As she raises three boys, our writer is starting to face tough questions from them about where they fit in. Her answer? As a whole, not just halves…My six-year-old son is learning about fractions. He sits next to me at the dining table, and draws a bat, then colours half of it green. “The word half is used when something is split into two equal parts,” he explains. I nod, go back to my laptop. Then he looks up at me and says, “I’ve got two halves. I’m half-Muslim, half-English. Right?” He looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to confirm whether his calculation is correct and my heart sort of breaks a little, to hear him refer to himself as pieces of a whole.I worry that if I push too much, they’ll grow up resenting both their religion and me Continue reading... Collapse

28/03/2020 - When my son was diagnosed, I was told the condition was hereditary. Suddenly my late mother’s ‘eccentric, bossy’ personality began to make senseSolomon was my first baby. He was loud. He screamed full throttle for an hour until the midwife swaddled him. I knew he was different from the moment I washed his slick dark hair and saw the ecstasy on his face. At home, he’d stare at his ladybird rattle for 15 minutes at a time. He’d gurgle with delight when we sang to him, but scream frenetically at the noise of the Hoover or blender. At postnatal groups, he’d crawl into a corner, alone.As a toddler, he learned all his times tables from watching a video repeatedly. He adored Thomas The Tank Engine and could quote from it seamlessly. Solomon had hyperlexia, a precocious reading ability. He was exceptional at maths but also an avid reader. He loved words. He’d make up brilliant, onomatopoeic neologisms to describe facial expressions that amused him (an “agarg” was absolute surprise).My mother Collapse