When people say "children can be cruel", they are talking about child-on-child meanness. Kids can be horrible to each other - the playground is where your personality is forged in a cauldron of hair-pulling, name-calling and dead legs.

But when you have survived this and made it through to adulthood,...

When my daughter dropped her ice cream recently, I hesitated for a moment. Then I picked it up, scraped off the bit that had made contact with the pavement and gave it back to her.

This is standard and approved parenting practice. You can't be waiting in line and...

Ribena used to be something you drank as often and in as great quantity as your parents allowed. You gave no thought to whether or not it was good for you, only that it tasted like sugary heaven. Things have moved on. You can now buy Ribena with a "Plus"...

Of all the wonderful Olympic moments, I can't decide which to claim that I witnessed first hand. I could go for something obvious, like Mo's 5000m or Jessica Ennis wrapped in the flag. But I am more minded to choose something less-anticipated - yet no less amazing - like Nicola...

Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, wrote a piece in The Times this weekend headlined "Ian Tomlinson is our Rodney King moment". A warning from such a figure of authority must be taken seriously.

There are obvious similarities. In 1992 four white LAPD...

My daughter has settled into nursery alarmingly quickly. When I went to pick her up for the first time she seemed very happy to see me and gave me a gratifyingly forceful hug. But I had seen her before she spotted me and she was clearly having a fantastic time....

Taking a year off work to look after my two-year-old daughter was the best decision I have ever made. There is no way I can quantify how brilliant it is to spend all this time with a toddler who glows with joy all day. But six months in, we need...