Today it isn’t raining and the wind doesn’t buffer the bird feeders on the crab apple tree. Today I have sown seeds in the wet soil and in pots of compost on the window ledge. And I have planted hardy hopes and autumn fruiting optimism in anticipation of bowls of greens and pots of jewelled …
Many of my Superparent friends; foster carers, adopters, kinships carers, guardians chose not to watch Superkids on Channel 4 last week. They said being Superparents had left them too broken, exhausted and sad and all they could face was a bit of I’m a Celebrity and an early night. The programme could have carried an …
The Wifi-free Wednesday is a brand new thing in our house. It has come into being as a consequence of online teen shenanigans and after an enforced period of zero internet reminded all of us how beautiful life can be without social friggin’ media. It’s a simple plan. We do something together every Wednesday evening; …
Billy is an angry, aggressive 11 year-old who is disruptive at school and destructive, argumentative and difficult at home. His meltdowns are catastrophic and impact upon everyone around him including his parents and his younger sister Lucy. He is the title character in my book Billy Bramble and the Great Big Cook Off, which was …
Billy Bramble – therapeutic story for children with angry, aggressive behaviours Read More »
Mother’s Day. A day that recognises your dedication and hard work throughout the year. A day that’s all about you, right? Wrong. For children with complicated, dislocated and perhaps distressing experiences of mothers, a whole day devoted to their marvellousness might just be one of the worst days that could have been invented. If Mother’s …
My new year resolution for 2017 was to plan more fun stuff. Planning fun, doesn’t necessarily equate to having fun, but if you don’t buy the tickets, you can’t go to the Stewart Lee gig. If you buy the tickets and stick them on your fridge they are reminders to get out and and experiment …
Can you empathise too much? For the sake of those who are time and attention poor I’ll jump to the answer to this question. Yes. Yes you can. Empathy has become a by-word for feeling someone else’s pain so intensely it automatically means you are a good and righteous person and people are miraculously improved …
Most Decembers I write a light and reflective round up of the year. As I’ve been as yet unable to digest the events of 2016 and am still bouncing from despair to mild optimism and back again, sometimes within a matter of moments, I’m going to stick to something far simpler. Here’s a list of …
Parenting children traumatised by their early experiences has taken me to some of the most bleak, incredible, lonely and wonderful places: places I had never imagined existed before I became a parent. At the same time the experience has been one of the most comic: not in a flippant way, but in the way that …
As a break from Experimental Living, I spent last week Experimental Writing at the Arvon centre in Devon, with tutors Adam Foulds and Toby Litt and a fabulous and kindly group of writers and experimenters. The Trump Triumph and his Farage Menage were a world away. It couldn’t have been better timed. Don’t pack a …
