I have a surprise for you.
This is one of the most peaceful periods in human history.

You wouldn’t know it, because you see images of war, of violence every day.
Despite the media attention, war and violence is not only what is out there.
The number of conflicts is at an all time low.
Countries work together more than ever.

When you see and hear war and violence all day, every day, that is what you think there is.
It creates a sense of fear.
It is what your children hear about every day too.
They are in a way being trained to fear as well.
Because fear means money for the media and votes for politicians.

What to do when talking with your kids?
When you talk about those big violent events with you children, you can focus on fear.
You can also choose to put it in perspective.
You can show sadness when someone shoots a large number of people.
And you can talk about how North America has about 300 million people and that most of these people have very peaceful lives. Are nice to their neighbors and work together to make things better for each other.

There are over 180 countries now. And only a few are fighting each other. Most of the world is at peace.

Education isn’t only learning about wars.

it is also about how media work and that happy doesn’t seem to get as much attention as bad.
How we get shown the bad things because we get a kind of scared feeling. And that more papers get sold when we feel that, or more ads get sold on TV when we watch these programs.

When you talk to your kids, with your kids, you can focus on hope.

You can talk about how so many countries work together now.

On how you see the same war all the time because luckily there is no other.

You can focus on how it is really sad how these acts of violence happen and that we should do everything to prevent them from happening.

But that being afraid of everyone isn’t the answer. Because we don’t have to be afraid of everyone. We can learn to work together and build trust.

“Sensationalism” is called that because we have strong sensations when we hear about certain things. And those strong sensations are coming only when we are not numbed by overload.

Seeing violence everyday numbs us, as it numbs our kids.

The same as with seeing sexual images all the time. Our kids learn to think it is normal.
That is why the media, games need to be louder and louder all the time to get the strong reaction needed to sell more.

You can avoid all that.

By limiting what you watch, read.
By limiting or guiding what your kids read, hear, watch.
Some will call it overprotective, some will call it unrealistic.
I say that the image you get in the media, on TV, movies and games is the unrealistic part.

You can train your kids to see peace, to see friendly people.
Not by being naive or by being careless.

By learning to make their own judgements in a good way, not by what is fed to them by people with their own money or power driven motives.

What it takes is that you are willing to stand up for hope instead of fear.
For a great world instead of a bad world.

What you see is what you get.
What you see is what they will learn to see too.
And you can talk about that.
Every day.

Wouter van der Hall is the author of The Parent Program
http://www.theparentprogram.com will give you easy access to positive parenting attitudes, tools and skills.

The Parent Program is a 15 minute a day email/web based parenting program.

You will feel more relaxed, confident and competent as you deal with parenting issues. 24/7 accessible at home and anywhere, so in your time, pace and comfort.

To help you become the great parent you can be.

It never fails to amaze me how much everyday life gets in the way. Are we too busy/not busy enough at work? Have we defrosted the chicken for dinner? Organized the service for the car? The list of drivel we occupy ourselves with in the name of Being An Adult is endless. Aren’t we boring? (Or is it just me?) Grown Up Life really does its best to get in the way of fun and adventure but every so often you are lucky enough to get a moment where your world focuses and zooms in and you are shown a truly important lesson. This happened to me this week and I have three little kids to thank for it.

According to the OED, a friend is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of family relations.” I happen to think that definition is a bit sparse and I think that my Teenager, her mates The Blonde and The Brunette would agree, although this is a guess as they probably wouldn’t let me into Teenager room long enough to find out, busy as they were this week, twittering and muttering behind her (firmly) closed door. Yes, school’s out for the Easter holidays and, as every parent knows, with holidays come mates, sleepovers and all the to-ing and fro-ing of kids with hectic social schedules, even if they are eight years old and ‘social life’ means hanging out with their bezzie and giggling at nothing in particular for hours on end.

Teenager had to deal with a potentially tricky situation this week. A friend of Busy Husband introduced his daughter (The Brunette) to Teenager last year while on a brief visit to Cyprus and they got on well. FoBH and daughter returned to the UK and, after a few overexcited emails and rambling, multicolored letters, the girls’ friendship fizzled out. Then we got the call that The Brunette was back: the obligatory sleepover was hastily organized and Busy Husband and I waited with baited breath – would they still get on? Well, The Brunette was barely out of the car before the giggling began and off they went, deliriously happy in a fog of lip gloss and badly woven friendship bracelets. Busy Husband and I marveled at the easy, unselfconscious joy that is friendship between kids (we’re a cynical pair, us two). It really was a unique occasion, watching two kids do what kids do best, being left alone to get on with each other. No questions, no agenda, no competition.

It’s every parent’s nightmare, isn’t it, bullying, or having The Kid With No Friends. There isn’t a parent alive who doesn’t silently cry with relief to know that their kid is never going to be the one picked last for the team or left out because, well, just because. I remember reading an article about kids who, for no apparent reason are actively disliked. The article described a situation where a note was passed from child to child around the classroom, saying ‘Everyone who hates Tom sign here.’ As the note made its way to Tom, every child in the class signed. Tom didn’t just have no friends, he was actively loathed. Most kids are liked by at least one or two other kids in their class and socioeconomic or racial groupings bear no relation to popularity, poking the ‘Who’s got the best trainers?’ argument in the eye good and proper. Neglected kids don’t show up on anyone’s radar and their lack of popularity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s the actively rejected kids that are cause for concern. Not only are they missing out on important learning experiences, they are missing out on fun. It goes without saying that, the older the rejected child, the more serious the potential outcomes.

I look back on my schooldays and remember the mindless and relentless emotional bullying that went on towards certain kids who seemed to just take it. One girl in particular stands out: the size of her teeth were a particular focus, as well as her clothes, her voice, in fact, everything about her was up for grabs. I remember vividly the unspoken peer pressure and now, as a cringing parent, see how totally random it was that we picked on her instead of anyone else. It’s no comfort at all to see that so much of our kids’ interaction is based on the luck of the draw, a horrid Darwinian lottery.

Teenager social skills were put to the test once more later in the week as The Brunette came face to face with Teenager best friend, The Blonde. Busy Husband and I watched, this time through our fingers, the “Jaws” theme in our ears, expecting the two opponents to start circling one another or at least have a good old scrap about who was leaving who out but, once again, the kids bewildered and delighted us by playing and screeching happily. Yes, yes, I know a cliché is a cliché is a cliché but in a place like Cyprus, where we are all shoved together like ants under a microscope, where true friends are few and far between and where people can be hard and unforgiving judgmental (I told you we were cynical), it was so good to see that innocence can prevail. Girls, I salute you.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

Busy Husband received a call last week which set the cat amongst the pigeons. It was his business partner, Someone Else’s Busy Husband, calling from his car in London, stuck in traffic, in the snow, on his way to a lengthy and unnecessary beaurocratic meeting with someone he didn’t like. Why on earth were we relocating to the UK, Someone Else’s Busy Husband stropped, and hung up. The recent lovely sunshine, lovely meals with lovely friends and, well, general loveliness that comes with living in north Cyprus were put starkly under the spotlight that evening at dinnertime. Instead of the usual ‘Eat it!’ shouting match with Goldilocks, she was given the night off in exchange for listening to her parents debating the pros and cons of living in Oxford versus Catalkoy, a stuck record that she and the other two have been subjected to over the past year or two. After a slow start out of the blocks, Oxford won round one (why is it that the lure of a tan suddenly makes builder’s rubble invisible to me?); north Cyprus caught up briefly but, ultimately, Oxford won the battle, its recently being voted the second happiest city in the UK (second to Bournemouth) clinching the deal.

It’s a situation that most expatriate families here in north Cyprus have agonised over at some point and many of us find ourselves frequently re-evaluating the answer to the Where Is Home? question. The reaction to our decision to leave the island after six years has been cleanly split: those who are right behind us and those who think we are completely bonkers. We have been accused of being educational snobs and naïve about UK life. We have had to justify, cajole and, ultimately, feel certain we know we are doing the right thing for the right reasons. Cyprus is safe, we have been told, it is a great place to bring up kids, it is clean and wholesome and innocent and honest. The UK on the other hand, is a dangerous, scary place, dirty and corrupt, full of obese goggle-eyed kids vying for the attention of exhausted parents who shove a ready meal and a tenner in front of them in the name of love. It goes without saying that this view of the UK is as ridiculous as that spouted of Cyprus.

Granted, the recent Unicef reports which firmly placed the dunce hat on the UK for being, well, a rubbish place for children to grow up, hasn’t helped our argument. In the recent study, the well-being of children in 21 industrialised countries was analysed and the UK did indeed come out wanting, its standard of living for kids on a par with that of (gasp!) the US. Kids’ material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, ‘young people’s own subjective sense of their own well-being’, and behaviours and risks were rated, the UK’s kids coming lowest by a mile in this last category apparently because some of them like to experiment with alcohol and, erm, don’t eat enough fruit. You’re fine, by the way, if you’re Dutch or Swedish.

In the end, for families like ours, it comes down to being in between a rock and a hard place. A deep love for this island isn’t enough for curious and intelligent children. Even the staunchest opponents to our decision admit that they’ll go somewhere else when the kids’ education reaches a level ‘too important to get wrong’ as one friend put it. And it doesn’t just come down to education of course. There is a ‘joke’ amongst Turkish Cypriot families we know. All their kids share the same ambition: to leave Cyprus. This is in no way a reflection of any lack of love for their home, rather a sad recognition that Cyprus has very little to offer the reasonably intelligent child in terms of that other kind of education, opportunities for personal growth and development.

Busy Husband was a UN child, rootless with itchy feet. As he traveled the world with his family, he learned what it truly means to be a foreigner: you might speak the lingo, contribute to the community but, unless your family is pretty unique, you will always be ‘other’. It was (and still is) a common fact that the later a UN family repatriated permanently to their native country, the more serious the problems experienced by their children, ranging from higher levels of drug taking to antisocial behaviour and suicides. The reasons for such hideous statistics are multifarious but even I can see how a ‘normal’, boring childhood would avert the terrible feeling of not belonging. And ‘normal’ to me means family life in all its excruciating glory: Grandpa snoring after Sunday lunch, glamourous Aunt Cath, or your bossy cousin coming to stay for the weekend.

Life’s difficult enough without being on the outside all the time. You choose: spending Saturday afternoon crossing an EU border to go to the supermarket vs having tea with granny. Diversity and competitive challenge are a hard fact of life and I simply want my kids to grow up with the confidence that comes from safely experiencing life in all its weird, cosmopolitan glory. Who wouldn’t?

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

It is pretty ironic that, tonight, as I sit and contemplate, procrastinate, fidget and generally nibble my way through this column, the main focus of my article has gone up in a puff of smoke. Instead of the usual screaming, arguing and general beating each other round the head with the nearest thing to hand, my kids got along really well today. How inconvenient. Usually, we teeter precariously on the knife edge that is sibling rivalry, something that, I have to confess, totally stumps me. Yes, I can appreciate all the childcare guru analysis about stages, needs, acting out and pushing limits, but, as an only child myself, I simply cannot begin to comprehend what it must be like to have a sibling in the first place, to have to share the people you love most in the whole wide world and, on top of that, to have to share them with people you don’t even like all the time. It is profoundly weird for me to imagine my mum giving another child a hug and a kiss and a bedtime story. I found it tough enough to share her with the cat, for crying out loud. My immediate family is quite suffocatingly small and so I did all my growing up in a pretty hit and miss way. Now, as a mother of three, I look back and wonder what on earth I actually did with all that time I would have used punching my sister, had I had one.

Tweenager was 5 when Goldilocks came along and the surges of pure guilt I had when we brought the new bundle home were staggering. Instead of giving her a sister, I felt that I was taking away half a mother. I didn’t know how to share her and I didn’t know how to let her share me. We stumbled along and all went OK, mainly because Tweenager was still so young, but this was the quiet before the storm as all hell broke loose when Squidget came along. I was frequently off with baby, pureeing mush or squirting milk everywhere and suddenly, my kitchen turned into a permanent arena for what, to me, looked like some kind of bizarre, no-rules extreme contact sport of pushing, shouting and random acts of lying on the floor and screaming. Sibling rivalry had entered our home and I was flummoxed. I sought help. Alpha Female in London is one of five sisters and delighted in making me turn puce with stories of how she and her sisters would viciously scratch each other’s faces or throw one another down flights of stairs – over a stolen make up brush. Busy Husband told me story after story about trips to casualty after his sister stabbed his hand with a fork for attempting to steal a chip from her plate, or purposeful and deliberate breaking of each other’s fingers. My blood ran cold and I watched and waited for my kids, now aged 8 and 3, to inflict untold misery upon each other in the name of ‘normal’ sisterly love.

I don’t know about you, but I think it is incredibly stressful to live in a house where emotional fireworks might go off at any given time, even if they are those of a toddler and young child. I try to pre-empt explosions before they happen and, if the grenades do go off, my natural inclination is to wade in there each and every time, referee-style with my cap and whistle, and resolve the conflict, usually by just adding a few decibels to the noise levels – not very helpful I admit. So I huff and puff and promise not to get involved and to let them ‘find their own way’, but after half an hour of combined whining, screeching and unexplained thumps and crashes, I always give in and, ultimately, don’t make it any better. Then, five minutes later, they astound me by chasing each other around the garden, beaming and giggling like long-lost best friends.

Sibling rivalry is like watching Darwinian theory in practice: the competition to get attention/love/approval/a new hamster is fierce and the game is (usually) one worth winning. Busy Husband and I really set ourselves up for a fall by having 3 girls: oh, the horror stories I have read about same-sex sibling rivalry and its propensity to cause emotional problems, mental illness, global warming – you name it, they’ll cause it, in themselves and others. And yet, as individual kids, neither Goldilocks nor Tweenager are jealous or unreasonable types. Bolshy, stubborn and loud, yes, but pretty laid back. We have done all the ‘right’ things: given them space/more attention, not favoured one over the other/reprimanded unacceptable behaviour, set out ‘rules of engagement’/left them alone. To be honest, we have probably temporarily succeeded in sufficiently confusing them into realising the fight just isn’t worth it. Perhaps that’s why they made my heart melt today with their affection and general cuteness towards one another. Having said that, I don’t think I’ll be packing up my hard hat just yet…

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

There’s no doubt about it: traveling with small children should come with a health warning. A big, noisy health warning, designed to make you come to your senses and remember that the best holidays can be had closer to home. The kind of government-sponsored health warning that features flashing lights, counseling and compensation. If you’re a parent, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re a parent and don’t, you’re fibbing. Any mum or dad will confirm that there are precious few other situations in our parenting careers that inspire such deep terror as an impending flight or long journey, occasions singular in their power to reduce otherwise competent, organised, relaxed parents to tense, gibbering wrecks with ‘doormat’ written on their foreheads.

If you haven’t already guessed, I have just returned from a trip to the UK with Squidget. The only saving grace was that I only had one child with me – I’m still too traumatised to travel with all three kids, following our last sojourn in the skies which very nearly ended with me trying to give them all away in the Heathrow Arrivals Hall. This time around, Squidget was angelic. She didn’t squeak let alone scream, she didn’t projectile vomit over three rows (and yes, I have had a child do that, 5 minutes into a flight to New York), she, well, she just played and cooed and generally made everyone go ‘aah’. So, why the trauma? Because half the trauma of traveling with kids is in the anticipation of the unique horror that only little people can wreak. Flying with kids is like childbirth (stick with me here): you dread it for weeks, months, beforehand; you plan and check and tick and plan some more; you wait for the dreaded day to arrive. And then it’s over. Just like that. Not too bad, you say, hey, I can do this, you say, so you book that expensive long haul flight to your dream destination and that’s when little Johnny decides to go through all 10 nappies before takeoff or when your older kid and accompanying best friend decide that they actually hate each other and let everyone know this, protractedly using the kind of cringemakingly blue language you were not even aware they knew.

I credit myself with being reasonably organised and on top of things. I make lists and there’s been many a day when a Post It note has saved my skin. And yet, when it comes to traveling with my family, I quite simply go mad, my obsessive hyper-organisation barely masking a simmering panic of ‘what if’ scenarios. When you have traveled with little kids and have indeed been reduced to that pink faced, frazzled mess, attempting to share out your remaining rations of half a packet of cheese and onion crisps between three starving children, two minutes into the flight, you become determined, and I mean determined, to never, ever go there again. You see, the problem with journeys where you and your brood are locked inside a metal tube, high in the sky with a bunch of unsympathetic strangers is that you become public property. Imagine the scenario: you are boarding a ‘plane alone, or with a friend. Chances are, most people won’t look twice (sorry, ladies).

On the other hand, if you have your kids with you, fellow passengers will have noticed you well before you even got on the ‘plane. They will have been praying that you’ll be seated at least 12 rows away, preferably on a flight going in the opposite direction to theirs. As you board, all eyes are on you, the sighs of relief audible as you pass each row. Post takeoff, if your kids are cute or just plain well-behaved, it’s smiles and pinched cheeks all round but if, God forbid, they cry or find themselves inconveniently possessed by the devil, you’ll be hearing the tutting and seeing those disapproving heads shaking in your dreams for weeks to come.

Hence my born-again zeal for in-flight preparation. I have been that woman with the baby throwing up everywhere, repeatedly (Tweenager, aged 3 months, en route to New York); I have been that woman who clearly had a screw loose, not to mention anger issues (thanks to Tweenager and Goldilocks squabbling all the way to Mauritius); I have also been that woman who didn’t bring enough nappies/Calpol/clothes/snacks with a higher nutritional value than cardboard. My hand luggage is now packed with military precision, albeit in pleasant smelling nappy sacks. Enough toys to fill a store, enough food to create a menu Gordon Ramsay would be proud of. And guess what? It usually ends up on the floor or lost, or rejected as being boring or yukky. I’m going to make my life easier: the next time I go abroad, I’m going to give each of my kids a new PSP and enough crisps to last them a week. Then I’ll pack them in little boxes and FexEx them ahead. Bliss.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

Ah, the television. Every mother’s fickle friend. The telly is such an innocent object for non-parents; once upon a time, a simple source of distraction, fun and entertainment, you bring home a baby and that innocent black box suddenly becomes an unpredictable monster, loaded with secret messages and influences, populated by weirdoes and gangsters waiting to drag your tot into a life of crime. That or Balamory, which could quite possibly be worse, as anyone who is familiar with Miss Hoolie will confirm.

It was a usual weekday afternoon, just hitting that blood-sugar-slump time of 4.30pm, when I realised I might have a problem on my hands. A normal day: kids tired from school, homework done, chilly outside, mum done in, so what do we do? We watch T.V. I prop my eyelids open with matchsticks and play with Squidget whilst the other two watch the box. I generally shove them full of fruit at this time, which reassures me in some small way that I’m not an entirely slovenly mother. They might be stunting their brain cells with televisual cr*p, but at least they’re getting their five a day, eh? It pretty much revolves around the same programmes and this was when I saw what we had slipped into. During the break, Goldilocks was able and very willing to sing along to a car insurance ad (she knew all the words) and, when the programme restarted, Tweenager uttered the immortal words, “I love this bit” – she had seen the episode before. I realised that so had I, and I knew what was coming next, too and, yes, it was funny, but that wasn’t really the point now, was it?

Addiction in children is a terrible thing, especially when their drug of choice is purple and fluffy and, to all intents and purposes, totally harmless. From Blue Peter to Teletubbies, Totally Spies to Spongebob Squarepants, via The Simpsons and Raven, my kids love television. Or rather, I wonder if they have instead learned to love television. Tweenager has always been a square-eyes. It used to be a running joke that she could sit in front of a screen for days and wouldn’t know if the house burned down around her. She loved T.V. but, as an only child, her viewing was tightly controlled. I watched with her, all the while quietly ruing the demise of Rentaghost and Saturday Superstore. Nonetheless, we discussed the violence of Tom and Jerry and analysed the motivations of Maisy Mouse, all the while wondering whether or not the Tweenies were of sufficient educational content. Television played a small role in an otherwise busy schedule of reading, playing and painting. I saw it as my duty to get on the floor and play Barbies, no matter how much she insulted my feminist tendencies. Then Goldilocks came along and then Squidget and what was once the box in the corner became a free and welcome babysitter.

If the data is to be believed, we should all quit whilst we are relatively ahead and throw our televisions out of the window. In a year, the average child spends 900 hours at school and nearly 1,023 hours in front of a TV. The average American child will witness 200,000 violent acts on television by the age of 18. 57% of all programming contains ‘psychologically disturbing’ acts of violence. The list goes on. And on. Sitting in front of a gogglebox turns our kids into socially inept fatties with warped life values and, worse, a penchant for reality T.V. and Dale Winton. But does it? Of course not. Too much of anything isn’t great; sticking your kid in front of four hours a day of the most educational, edifying nature programmes is going to result in nothing more than an antisocial child, expert in the breeding habits of the yak. So, what’s the alternative? You guessed it, it’s time, your time to be precise. Kids need supervising a lot more than we realise and television, even the most rubbish television, is fine, if that’s all it is. When mum has had 4 hours sleep, the T.V. can seem like her new best friend when the thought of arts and crafts leaves her reaching for the Valium. I understand now that when television becomes a substitute for something else, that’s when it is a problem. When it starts to replace attention, bedtime stories, fun - that’s when the box should be put out to pasture.

I’ll let you into a little secret. You see, I’m a bit biased and probably haven’t done my kids any favours because I actually love watching television, too. I actually have a rather worrying affection for the genius that is Spongebob Squarepants. EastEnders, Top Gear, Casualty, I love them all. Nothing beats that feeling of settling down to watch something you enjoy, switching off daily life for a while and getting stuck into a good programme (and I stress the good – we’re not talking Tricia here). After a long day at work, would you rather relax and dumb things down a bit or do a spot of spring cleaning followed by a few chapters of Crime and Punishment? I rest my case.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

This column comes with a health warning: readers of a sensitive disposition should be aware that I am unbearably smug and self-congratulatory at the moment as 3 year old Goldilocks and the 8 year old Tweenager were both offered places at one of the UK’s top schools this week. Naturally, we have accepted, even though it undoubtedly now means that we will have to cycle everywhere and live off baked beans for the foreseeable future. After seven years of island life in Cyprus, Busy Husband and I have decided to head home to the UK, back to the incessant rain, grumbling and tepid tea. I for one can hardly wait, but that’s another story. Now that the euphoria has worn off (a bit), a mild panic has set in: there is Too Much To Do. There are also decisions to be made and right now our lives are revolving around the biggest decision of them all: The Pets. So much for being the cats that got the cream, we are now dealing with the cat who got the microchip, the C5 customs form and a Snugrug (whatever that is) in a quarantine centre a million miles away from where we will be resettling. But we love her, and so we must persevere.

The decision to take our kitty cat has been a decidedly laborious one, fraught with emotional pitfalls. We have had tears, pleading and cajoling but, politicians take note, we have finally achieved a settlement: the cat can come, but the dogs must stay. Ouch. Having been forced to stare down the barrel that is quarantine, Busy Husband and I have unreservedly balked at the idea - and then felt extraordinarily guilty, years of those ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’ ads throttling our consciences. Leaving Cyprus has forced us to confront the fact that, gulp, we are not actually sure why we have pets at all. Moving to Cyprus is, for many, a trial by fire introduction to animal husbandry. I had never owned a dog before I came here and was fairly indifferent to our cats. Within a year of moving to the island, we had three dogs, all strays, all uninvited guests in our garden, all hideously mistreated. Kipper, the first, was two and still wearing the chain collar put on her as a puppy which hadn’t been removed or loosened since. Jack the Perfect Pointer arrived at our gate at the end of one hunting season and fell in love with Kipper. Poor old Jack isn’t blessed in the machismo department and would probably rather get a manicure than fetch a kill, hence the ‘manly’ hunters decided he was of no use to them and went off in their full combat gear to shoot more bullets at tiny birds.

Dumping dogs. Isn’t that what we are doing now? This is the question I confront myself with in the dead of night now that we have two dogs, Jack the Perfect Pointer and Holly the Lovely Labrador, whom we simply cannot love enough to take with us to England. I read a recent study by the RSPCA which analysed pet ownership and the reasons for buying a pet. A large percentage of respondents bought a pet ‘for their kids’. Scroll down and you’ll see that the pets’ ‘primary care giver’ is the respondent, that is, definitely not the kid the animal was bought for in the first place. So many of us convince ourselves that it is important to have an animal in the house, for the kids, to somehow teach them a level of responsibility and maturity that they would apparently lack without copious amounts of dog poo to pick up. I know that Busy Husband and I have done that over the past seven years. In a futile attempt to please and edify the kids, we have allowed every Fido and Fifi that crossed our path to stay and make themselves at home. Every exclamation of ‘But he’s so cute!’ has tugged ferociously at the heart (and purse) strings. As a result, we have come to expect too much of kids and dogs alike: we don’t understand why the kids aren’t interested in pup when the cute stage has been and gone and why aren’t those darned dogs getting on with teaching our kids to be responsible animal lovers? And here’s the gap: parenting is all about leading by example. If you are constantly complaining (like I am) about the smell/hairs/poo/barking, your behaviour is going to have two major consequences: your kids are not going to learn to respect your pet as a member of the family or, as has happened in my house, your kids decide that, actually, they love the pet because of your lack of respect for it and think that you’re a pair of selfish old farts.

As with so much parenting, I think the best option here is to learn as much as you can by proxy. Other people’s mistakes can be so useful. Our neighbours have four little dogs which are kept in a cage and are, by my amateur pet psychiatrist calculations, demented. Useful lesson in selfish animal husbandry, Number 1. Number 2 comes in the form of a family we know who have, over the years, experimented with various animals in their search for the Perfect Pet. Dog (mad), rabbit (eaten), hamster (?) and now goat – their young son clearly couldn’t care less. And why should he? Each temporary pet has had a definite shelf life (quite literally it seems, in the case of the rabbit). Back to our pooches. Yes, we will have to leave them behind and yes, I will feel awful doing so. But no, we won’t dump them, either in a rescue centre or in a field. We will rehome them. Failing that, it’s Plan B. Just don’t tell Busy Husband.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

As I write this, I am sitting alone in my house for the first time in eighteen months. I am totally and completely alone, bar the cat. It is quiet, just the sound of birds outside, even the usual drone and thud of construction work in neighbouring fields has halted in honour of the occasion. I can do whatever I want: drink tea which is still hot, read a book and fall asleep with it on my face, leave the house with just my keys and mobile. And what do I actually want to do? Well, other than compulsively tidy the kitchen and my sock draw, I want to bite my nails and fidget and maybe, just maybe, make one tiny call to the childminder, just to make sure that her phone is working and that Squidget isn’t too distraught without me.

Yes, dear reader, I have finally done it. Little Squidget has gone off to her childminders, alias Wonderwoman and Superman, for the morning, for the first time, and I am feeling bereft, like I have sent her away to borstal. Wonderwoman and Superman are the most capable, wonderful people I know, having looked after Goldilocks when I returned to my former life of Career Woman following her birth, some three years ago, so my feelings of dread, guilt and sheer loss are at once rendered ridiculous. But I still feel loss, like part of my body has weirdly evolved and fallen off.

It has been a long road to today, a road pitted with emotional minefields and practical nightmarishness. Who would have imagined that organising enough time to sit and stare gormlessly out of the window could be so complicated? When I gave birth to the Tweenager, I was in my second year at university. I was 22, had just moved to the UK, got married and moved house. My life fell apart when she was born and daycare was the best option. Even as a tiny baby, she was very stoic about the whole thing, bravely heading off to nursery and then school with a rucksack the same size as her on her back, blinking back the tears as she bravely waved goodbye. I never got over the guilt that crippled me every time I left her and went to my lectures. Staying at home was never an option I considered – I was grateful to get through the day without having a tantrum of my own. By the time Goldilocks was born, I was in Cyprus, running a successful business, stronger, healthier, happier, but I had gained that enemy of kids the world over: a Career. I swore I would do better by my second daughter and delegated frantically. Unfortunately, my maternity cover proved to be barking mad and so I returned to work (not altogether unwillingly), baby on hip and often on breast (much to the combined curiosity/shock of anyone within burping distance). A year later, Wonderwoman and Superman entered our lives and Goldilocks found her happy ever after with them for the next two years. The fact that she was and is never fazed by anything, giving any poor soul looking after her a real run for their money, helped assuage any feelings of guilt I might have been harbouring.

Fast forward to today. Before gathering the resolve to ask Wonderwoman and Superman to help out with Squidget (it took me two months to make the call), I read every darn article discussing the pros and cons of early childcare, about separation anxiety and how to handle it. There is a massive amount of information out there on how and why to leave your child but precious little discussion of the emotional impact separation has on the frazzled parent left holding an empty packet of wet wipes. I have always been oddly clingy with all my kids. I’m known for it: well-meaning friends and not-so-friendly others have often joked that I am too attached to them. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting them go, a genuine problem not helped by the fact that it seems to be a medical condition peculiar to Turkish Cypriots to squeeze, stroke and physically grab your baby out of your arms at any given opportunity. If I let them go, what would I do with myself? Knit? Become an estate agent? So I became a Stay At Home Mum extraordinaire. With no life. Enter Wonderwoman and Superman, who I can hear coming up the driveway now. Squidget is smiling in the back seat and all is good with the world. I think I might be able to get used to this.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

I have a book in my shelf called How To Eat, by Nigella Lawson. This big brick of a book has it all, recipes for every occasion, age and palate. It is feted as a modern culinary classic but there is a fundamental problem with it. You see, How To Eat doesn’t actually do what it says on the cover, that is, tell you how to eat. Admittedly, it probably wouldn’t have sold that many copies had it consisted of four pages, stating (1) put food on fork/spoon, (2) shovel into mouth, (3) make appreciative noises / spit out (4) place cutlery neatly on plate. But that is simply how to eat, isn’t it? So why hasn’t anyone been able to communicate that to my intelligent three year old? Goldilocks as we’ll call her (she has the ubiquitous golden hair, plus a devilishly contrary streak) has ‘a problem’. Made infamous by parenting programmes such as The House of Tiny Tearaways, The Child That Won’t Eat is second in line only to The Child That Won’t Sleep in its ability to make even the most devoted of parents pull their hair out in desperation and consider adoption as a viable form of daycare. It’s not that Goldilocks doesn’t like food, she just doesn’t like eating. When she is hungry, she’ll devour anything you put in front of her. (She happily snacks on mung bean sprouts for crying out loud.) But, all too often, she simply doesn’t want to eat what I want her to eat when I want her to eat it. Let the battle commence…

Feeding time in our house is straightforward. I cook from scratch and we have eaten together as a family pretty much every evening since our eldest, the Tweenager, was born. Along came Goldilocks and we battled through mealtimes with the determination of Paula Radcliffe. With the arrival of Squidget eight months ago, Busy Husband and I are beginning to wonder if we should just shove the kids in front of the TV and throw scraps at them as we sup on champagne and smoked salmon. I have never been one of those mothers to lovingly craft happy faces and complicated jungle animals out of a piece of cheese and carrot strips and so it was whilst stretching out over the dinner table last month, attempting to ram, I mean entice another forkful of food through a decidedly unimpressed Goldilocks’ locked lips, whilst simultaneously feeding Squidget, plotting corporate strategy with Busy Husband and discussing playground politics with Tweenager, that it hit me. Goldilocks’ food ‘issues’ weren’t anything to do with food at all. At the risk of going all Freudian and sounding like I’ve been delving through my handy pocket-sized copy of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Developmental Psychopathology, I realized that this was no epicurean ‘problem’ – this was about getting attention. Duh! Yes, alright, it might seem staggeringly obvious to everyone else but it is incredible how families get caught up within cycles of behaviour that have absolutely nothing to do with their outward symptoms…

Busy Husband and I have always been irritatingly smug about the fact that we are one of ‘those’ families who sit down together of an evening, and it has long been a family joke that I am more than faintly obsessive about what, when, how and why my kids eat what they eat. I spend hours lovingly crafting nutritious fare out of wheat grass and sunflower seeds, even knitting my own lentils, wink wink. Unfortunately, what we had failed to grasp was that our kids wouldn’t actually care if they were eating Findus Crispy Pancakes every night of the week, as long as they had our full attention while doing it. Sitting around a table all together simply isn’t enough, it seems. When Goldilocks was tiny, I fed her. She was my little cherub, the apple of my eye. So what if I had to feed her? So what if she ran around the kitchen during dinner?

I’ll never forget the moment when I knew with unfailing certainty that we were idiots: I looked up to see that the Tweenager was the only person sitting at the table. Busy Husband and I were on the floor with Goldilocks, him distracting her with a book while I hovered nervously, spoon in hand, waiting for an open-mouthed moment to pounce and shovel it in. Tweenager and I locked eyes and she shook her head in pity. She was 7. I was so embarrassed. Yes, even then I knew the truth but my fear of her imminent starvation was all-encompassing. Squidget was born and The Problem ‘mysteriously’ worsened. We carried on feeding Goldilocks, we stopped feeding her (not literally), we punished her (until she started asking to go to the naughty step during dinner), we started feeding her again, we labeled her as being lazy, we argued between ourselves. She loved every minute of it.

We are now in the process of undoing three years’ worth of bad habits, hers and ours. The rules of the dinner game are clear, the mobiles have been switched off, music has been switched on. Everyone gets a chance to speak, no one is allowed to shout. It’s working – so far. Hell, if all else fails, Busy Husband and I can always develop an interest in cheap wine. Pass the corkscrew…

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net

Let me tell you about my friend, Alpha Female. She is a savvy young woman at the top of her profession, who can cook fantastically, speak three languages and drink your average Russian under the table, all while looking like a film star. Jealous? Of course. But, Alpha Female appears to have suddenly met her match in the form of a small, unpredictable creature: her newborn son. Alpha Female’s route to motherhood was pretty much the ideal: with lovely Alpha Male for a few years, married in a tear-jerking ceremony, traveled the world, excelled at work. Then along came baby and Alpha Female backtracked along the evolutionary path and regressed into Pregzilla, devouring each and every pregnancy-related book, website and programme she could get her hands and ears on, with an all-encompassing need to know, to understand what she was going through, was about to go through, to be ready. I was flummoxed by emails and texts pondering the relative merits of strict routines and ‘baby whispering’. I was no help. I thought ‘baby whispering’ involved Robert Redford and a horse’s nostrils. Confused? I still am.

Kids. Whether you’re making them or raising them, it’s a bit of a project, isn’t it? A seriously long-term, oh-God-what-have-I-done sort of a project, admittedly. But the best bit is that you don’t really need any qualifications to take part, just a bit of common sense. A finely calibrated sense of humour helps, too. Instinct, genetics, whatever, something kicks in and we tend to muddle through. We immerse ourselves in the enjoyable consumerism, the paraphernalia of the task at hand. We confidently choose the booties, the buggy, the cot and the colour of the nursery. The Man of the House fiddles with baby monitors and does his best to get excited about the Bugaboo vs Baby Bjorn debate. And then, as we are in full thrust of the novelty of the growing bump, we start wondering if maybe we should take a quick flick through some of the parenting guides on offer, just to have a look, mind, so that we are a teensy bit prepared for life after the big event, The Birth. Any mother will tell you that the nine months of pregnancy are almost entirely devoted to staving off the terror of giving birth. We write birth plans with the vain idea that they will somehow lessen the sheer hideousness of labour and then we turn to distractions for the rest of the pregnancy. If we are clever, we turn to a nice gentle hobby. But some are tempted by The Books and terror of the birth is quickly replaced by the terror of Getting It Wrong, ‘It’ being the next eighteen years or so. You see, having kids is like coursework that never gets handed in but is, instead, continually assessed. Assessed by your peers, by your mother in law, by strangers in the supermarket, let alone by you walking the room with a thoroughly awake baby at 3am, wondering where you went wrong.

And so back to Alpha Female. In her hormonally vulnerable state, she keenly felt the pressure to Get It Right. Baby ‘guru’ Gina Ford instructed her to get baby into a military, love starved routine immediately or face the consequences of having a socially inept three year old, while attachment parenting manuals urged her to give up any semblance of a life and breastfeed until puberty. I scoffed. I gave birth for the first time eight years ago and honestly don’t remember feeling that pressure. Nowadays, it seems de rigeur to cook perfectly (thanks celebrity chefs), keep fit (er, thanks Z-list celebs with your pole dancing workout DVDs) and, most of all, be happy and calm and in control at all times. My scoffing became a strangled squawk as a quick browse of my shelves showed no less than 18 parenting-related books. Oops. Hormones do amazing things to your memory.

Rummaging amongst all these books, most of which I hadn’t even read, made me wonder what on earth possessed me to buy clearly conflicting tomes of ‘advice’ and left me shamefaced at the realisation that the only person to actually benefit from most of them was the author, laughing all the way to the bank. Against my better judgment, I read through them and immediately regretted it. Three kids later, my ‘methods’ have dissolved into the bribe-reward school of parenting which, curiously enough, doesn’t seem to have a ‘guidebook’, even though it is the preferred method for most parents I know. Having been made to feel so inadequate by reading so much of how it’s supposed to be done in a perfect world, I have decided to aim at how to be a good parent in the real world. Sometimes fish fingers are the best you can manage and yes, of course goldfish go to heaven, sweetheart. As for Alpha Female? Well, she has come to her senses, ditched the guilt and put two fingers up to other people’s expectations. She went back to work last week.

Nikki is a freelance writer whose work is regularly commissioned by and published in a variety of international magazines and newspapers. As a mother of three young daughters, her writing often focuses on parenting and lifestyle issues but, secretly, Nikki also has a ‘proper’ job, as an expert writer on overseas real estate investment. She acts as a consultant to agents and developers, identifying and marketing key emerging markets. She is currently collaborating with Property Club International. See more at http://propertyclubinternational.net