Do school prize days really celebrate success?

This is the time of year when parents clear their daytime calendars and start attending sports days, end-of-year plays and recitals, and of course prize days. This year after our prize day there was a casual picnic with parents from every school year, and prize day prompted a lot of debate. The biggest question was “do they really celebrate success”? “If they all get a prize, what’s the...

Playtime is over for New York parents

What does any NYC parent worth his or her salt do when they feel their child’s nursery education is not up to snuff? Of course – they sue. The Times wrote yesterday about the lawsuit brought byNicole Imprescia against her daughter’s preschool. You can read that piece on the Times’s site (even if you’re not a subscriber, for £1 you got all of the stories from today’s paper plus...

Why cheerleading is good for the UK

The other day I discovered A Modern Mother’s dark little secret: she used to be a cheerleader. I loved this little revelation because I, too, used to be a cheerleader (evidence pictured) and frankly, it can be a little lonely. Even if we are amazingly hot, we’re still dumb blondes who mindlessly shake our pompoms at the footballers – we don’t even know what to do with ourselves after the...