Medusa

No, but I'm watching this thread with interest, as I've been with Virgin since April and I find their internet service pretty erratic and slow. I've already been through a bitter divorce from TalkTalk who failed to win my love.

There are some fantastic doctors at DMC, yes, but the appts system is unwieldy, to say the least. It also bothers me a little that even though I have been there quite a lot in the last few years, I've only ever seen the same doctor twice a couple of times.

My children had it, too. Two of them were hospitalised for 5 & 7 days respectively and needed tons of oxygen. Given that they had also been very premature and had chronic lung disease, I was warned that the bronchiolitis might cause scarring that would lead to ongoing respiratory problems. In the event they were all absolutely fine once they recovered and in the eleven years since, have barely coughed. I dosed them religiously with vitamins and echinacea for years, though. I know how awful it is to watch your baby in hospital like this, but it may not mean long-term damage.

I'm not sure the snugness of the nappy would make much difference. Is it possible that they are using a brand of wipes that disagree with her? Johnson's irritate some babies' skin, for example. Or could she be eating/drinking something there that is too acidic for her?

I have to hold my breath every time I walk past Lush. Super-stinky. The Body Shop is less vile but still, I generally think that it's better if people smell of people rather than of fruit. I don't like smelling vaguely edible.

But don't bank on common sense having much bearing on how these sorts of applications are processed. I had excellent evidence to document my case for an application being considered on these grounds but it made no difference. I was told at appeal 'the kind of cases this category refers to are families under the Witness Protection Programme and a child with leukaemia'.

One of my boys had the one that cries and burps and makes slurpy noisy when you put a bottle in its mouth. He loved it. Actually he still has it somewhere and he's big now!

All of my sons had dolls when they were little. Just the same sort of dolls that they'd have had if they'd been girls. Is it really so controversial? Most small children like to play with a wide variety of toys from Duplo to dolls to puzzles to bears. I can't really think of any sensible reason to restrict what any child can play with.

Two of my children did the same thing within a week of each other! The problem is probably with the stability of the build-up, rather than the skill of the dentist; it fell out within a day each time in the case of my apple-munching boy. After a few attempts, he was fitted with a 'veneer' which has proved much more robust and is intended to last until he is eighteen and the tooth can be permanently repaired. The veneer has lasted about two years now. We go to the Herne Hill dental practice. Whatever repair is done on the tooth, though, will not make it strong. Even with the veneer, we were told to regard the tooth as something to look at, but not to bite with... These childhood repairs are really only intended to last until the child's old enough for a crown/cap.

'Fraid so. After that they entertained themselves making faces and switching place name cards around. Fortunately there was an outdoors space where they could then go & race about. Hopefully you have one, too? (Or else children with less energy than mine...)

At my brother's civil partnership reception last year he provided colouring books and pencils/crayons for the smaller children and sudoku books for my lot, who were ten then. It kept them amused for a good 45 mins.

Look in Karavan on Lordship Lane. They have sandwich wrapping thingies that unfold and become a sort of plate. I used one for my son's packed lunch and it was great. About ?5.

With all due respect to those who have implied that my choice is based on 'nonsense' or 'prejudice', I don't agree. My children have many men who enrich their lives in a variety of ways; I value them enormously, as I do the brilliant male teachers/coaches, etc, they have had over the years. I want them to see both men and women in as wide as possible a range of roles that challenge gender norms. My own experience - both professional and personal - in the field of sexual abuse has given me a pretty clear idea about the actual facts, rather than the misconceptions, about abuse, and it is undeniably true that men pose a far greater risk than women do. While it goes without saying that I don't see every man as a likely, or even potential, abuser, it is nevertheless true that nobody can ascertain which individual is a 'safe bet' on the basis of an interview, a CV and even a CRB check. Nor is it possible to divine who probable abusers are on the basis of 'gut instinct'; if it were, far fewer people would respond to revelations of abuse with the shocked comment that they had *no idea* that their friend/babysitter/scout leader/husband/etc was capable of that. For that reason and that reason alone, I would not choose a male childminder because *within that context* I would not have the opportunity to get to know someone well enough over a long enough period of time to be certain that I could trust them. My kids are regularly seen up trees and lampposts in SE22 and hardly live an overprotected and cloistered life, but with some aspects of their safety, I choose to err on the safe side. It doesn't mean that my children miss out on good male role models; their science tutor (they're home-educated atm) and their tennis coach are both lovely men whom they adore. It's also nonsense to imply that men are being 'driven from' fields of work such as teaching. Men have traditionally held fewer posts in primary schools, while the posts they do hold tend to be senior. Elsewhere, more men are employed in nurseries than in the past and there are far more men in nursing now than even 20 years ago. This is *obviously* a good thing in the same way and for exactly the same reason that it's a good thing to have more women engineers, physicists and plumbers. It's perfectly possible to be in favour of equality of opportunity whilst recognizing that safeguarding children is paramount. My choice not to leave my children alone with a man I don't know very well is not substantially different from the regulations that prohibit male doctors/nurses from carrying out intimate examinations on female patients without a second person present. So far as I'm aware, male nursery workers are not allowed to assist with certain types of care needs either, nor are male teachers supposed to have unsupervised meetings, etc, with female pupils. These rules and regulations were all drawn up in response to an increased awareness of the prevalence of abuse. Do the people who consider me an alarmist bigot also think that these measures are excessive?

No. Simply because on the basis of risk assessment, I wouldn't leave my child with any man I didn't know very well.

Certainly. PM me!

Me. Three of them,in fact!

From a cursory scan through his past posts, I suspect that silverfox is less concerned about medical ethics than about the Outrageous Overthrowing of Normal Family Life and all who sail in it. Fortunately it matters very little that moral dinosaurs are still stomping around grumpily; the rest of the world is moving on.

I am having a cull of books this week and have at least ten or so your son might like. PM me if you'd like to come & take a peek.

I'd be inclined to take it to the Asylum Centre on Copleston Road.

Father Jack, I am about to start home-schooling three Year 7s. Trying to start networking with other people doing the same. PM me if you're interested in pooling resources, etc.

I'll home-school until they have a place at a school that's right for them. No other option really.

It was unsuitable because it didn't meet specific requirements of one of my children who has OCD & AS. I had good letters of support from the primary school's Senco and a child psych but still lost the appeals. 'Parental choice' is a meaningless concept. It's more like 'express your preference and we'll promptly disregard it'. The grounds given for dismissing appeals are about as meaningful as your average cut-and-pasted pupil's school report.

No, I appealed to two schools and lost both appeals, having turned down the school I was offered because it was unsuitable. I now have three children with no places at all.

Is anyone in the area home-schooling secondary school-aged children? I have a small batch of them who were supposed to be starting in Year 7 but haven't got places at present and so until such a time as they are offered a place at a school I'm happy with, I am resigned to home-schooling. I've just joined Education Otherwise but it would be good to make contact with local home-schooling families asap...

^ That happened to me years ago. I got three or four PCNs in the post about parking infractions that took place while I was either asleep or quite decisively housebound with baby triplets. I phoned up and rather rattily told them this and oddly enough, my word was accepted without question.