Potty training for the workplace?

August 3, 2008 – 9:55 pm by Suzy

My thoughts turned to potty training this week as I attempt to encourage my two-year-old daughter to ditch the nappies. Can’t honestly say I’ll miss swilling out a putrid bucket of washable nappies, however eco-friendly they may be. Actually, potty training is proving to be even more onerous than I remember from the last couple of times – so I really do pity the increasing number of reception teachers who are being faced with four-year-olds who are still in nappies when they start school because their witless parents have not bothered to train them.  I can’t imagine what sort of disruption this is causing to classes that are already hampered by grunting children who have not yet mastered language from their electronic babysitters. I see something of a parallel emerging in the workplace.  I can’t be the only fastidious employer out there who is regularly shocked by plummeting standards of literacy amongst ...

Peppermint goes picnicking

July 28, 2008 – 12:28 pm by Julaine

Apparently no-one takes their lunch hour anymore; well, last week Peppermint paid tribute to the ‘lunch hour’ with a good old fashioned picnic. Peppermint ventured out of the office and straight into the great outdoors of Dunham Massey to sample the gorgeous (and most probably short-lived) weather.

Battery kids will make bad businesspeople

July 14, 2008 – 2:41 pm by Suzy

Will our cotton-wool kids grow up into rubbish business people? The entrepreneur Simon Woodroffe, of Yo Sushi fame, certainly thinks so - and I couldn't agree more. Radical changes to childhood are producing a lilly-livered generation of battery kids who are cocooned from even the most negligible risk. A successful entrepreneur needs to take risks, push themselves and others to their limits and show unlimited reserves of initiative and imagination.  Those are all qualities which need to be allowed to flourish in childhood.   Swopping a screen for real life experiences and keeping kids indoors safe - and sedentary - stifles drive and kills creativity.   It's hard to imagine these slack-jawed screen addicts blossoming into the pioneering British entrepreneurs of tomorrow. On the homefront, I've made my own small stand for freerange childhood by shoving my little boys out the door to make short trips (gasp!) by themselves. Walking to the local shop or a friend's house is something entirely normal that any child of a reasonable age should be able to do.  Yet, in our skewed world, it has somehow morphed into an act of unspeakable danger.   The real danger is what our ...

Serving up a treat

July 10, 2008 – 12:03 pm by Emma

Pimms, strawberries and cream, and hazy summer sunshine – well perhaps not the sunshine. Does one event ever rally the fine British troops like a spot of tennis at Wimbledon? I think not. Every year, the All England affair draws in thousands who line the residential streets of SW19 in a desperate bid to watch the world’s elite battle it out on grass.

A collapsed composter and Louis’ first veggie order

July 1, 2008 – 6:20 pm by Suzy

Jubilation! A clumsy builder has knocked over my composter en route to the garden, cracking it open and revealing...compost!  Well, not exactly the crumbly, soil-like substance I'd been hoping for,