Parent Pages information for families

When Amanda Staveley was a girl, her parents told her that tradition dictated her brother would inherit the family’s considerable wealth, while her role should be to marry into money. However, the constraints of custom and conformity were not for Amanda. Today, at the age of 39, she is as famous for being a financial fixer [...]

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Pupils from a black Caribbean heritage are more than twice as likely to be identified as having behaviour issues than their classmates, a study has found. It also suggested that children born in the summer are more likely to be found to have moderate learning difficulties than those born in the autumn, at the start [...]

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A pair of extremely rare white tiger cubs have been unveiled in the Czech Republic. via Video: Rare white tiger cubs unveiled – Nature – Environment – The Independent.

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As children head back to school, mothers have forked out on brand spanking new uniforms to ensure that their precious offspring look the part. But according to new research British children lose an astounding £187 million worth of school uniform each year- this is the equivalent of paying for over 7,300 children to attend university [...]

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The death of a toddler from a methadone overdose could only have been prevented if he had been taken into care, a serious case review has found. Jayden-Lee Green, aged 23 months, was found dead at home in Bristol, in August 2011, after his father gave him the heroin substitute. The review said professionals involved [...]

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A woman who died after being caught in a rip current at a Cornish beach may have gone into the sea to rescue her children, the RNLI has said. The woman, aged in her 50s, and her two sons – aged 11 and 13 – got caught in a current off Northcott Mouth, near Bude, [...]

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Women who end their first pregnancy with an abortion increase the chances of giving birth prematurely second time around, researchers claim. Previous research has associated multiple terminations with a range of complications for future pregnancies including pre-term birth. But a new study suggests that the much greater proportion of women who have undergone just one [...]

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Swanage and Wareham Swanage is an unspoilt seaside town with a lovely beach, traditional deck chairs, a funfair and amusement arcades. Swanage Museum and Heritage Centre (swanagemuseum.co.uk, open daily 10am-5pm) has activities for children. Dancing Ledge, a large flat area of stone resembling a ballroom floor and managed by the National Trust, is a favourite [...]

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From hunting for fossils along the beach to discovering amazing sculptures in a disused quarry, there are plenty of ways to fire children’s imagination in south and west Dorset As featured in our Dorset holiday guide • What’s your favourite day out in Dorset? Add your tip to the comments below Dorset’s Golden Cap is [...]

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A hilarious video has captured a three-year-old boy’s sheer devastation at hearing he is not a ‘Single Lady’, while busting out to Beyoncé’s hit song with his sisters in the car. The footage, taken on a family road trip and uploaded on YouTube, shows three children sitting grumpily in the backseat of their parents’ SUV. [...]

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Summer is over and school bells are ringing once more, but there are no excitable children storming the halls of these incredible buildings. An eerie collection of photographs has captured abandoned schools around the United States, left to crumble into ruin. The imposing structures were once filled with burgeoning life as children of all ages [...]

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An overly considerate couple is being praised for going above and beyond to placate their fellow air travelers. The parents, accompanied by their 14-week-old twin boys, distributed sweets to passengers as a pre-emptive strike in anticipation of the infants wreaking havoc in the skies. The innovative approach was broadcast on Reddit by someone on the [...]

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Babies which grow from frozen embryos are less likely to be born preterm or underweight and have a lower risk of dying in the days after their birth, a study found. Using embryos which have been frozen and then thawed, rather than being implanted shortly after being created, also reduced the risk of bleeding in [...]

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An Oxfordshire-based company that makes school uniforms has failed to meet its orders in time for the start of term for the second year running. Simply Schoolwear in Faringdon blamed delays with its Chinese supplier for its problems. The company supplies about 318 schools across the country and has between 1,200 and 1,500 affected orders. [...]

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The unnamed teenager was convicted on her confession under sharia law after her family complained that she has had sex with a 29-year-old man in July. The man was given 10 years in jail during a court hearing in the remote Raa atoll on Sunday. A court official said the girl, whose identity was not [...]

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Schools could be putting pupils’ personal data at risk by failing to store it securely, according to new research. The study suggests that schools are increasingly collecting students’ biometric data, such as fingerprints, but do not always think about the security issues surrounding this. It found that almost half of schools have regulations on personal [...]

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Some weeks ago I wrote about the problem of children being ‘tortured’ to death in high-tech hospitals because their religious parents won’t agree to let them die. This was brought out by a piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics, co-authored by two doctors at Great Ormond Street and the hospital’s Anglican chaplain. These decisions [...]

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Data including information about where children live, who their parents are, their routes to school, whether relatives are on the sex offenders’ register, whether they have special needs and whether they are known to social services are not being guarded vigilantly enough, according to the study. 40 per cent of UK secondary schools and 10 [...]

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The girl’s mother, named by police as Annette Creegan, 49, from Mitcham, Surrey, is believed to have been strangled by her boyfriend before being thrown in the water, possibly while her daughter was asleep during a Norfolk Broads break. Local rumours suggest that the man later told the girl that her mother had left the [...]

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Tens of thousands have joined the crusade to protect children by imposing an automatic block on online pornography. A petition containing more than 110,000 names will be handed in to Downing Street next week, putting huge pressure on David Cameron to take tough action to make the internet a safer place. More than 140 MPs [...]

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It looks like a fairground game: a little girl and a puppet play together, using miniature fishing rods to hook tiny buckets of coins. But this is actually a psychological experiment. Its aim is to measure a very complex human concept – fairness. The game works like this: the puppet (with the aid of an [...]

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The cub was measured and weighed, and all indications were that it is growing normally. “So the baby is doing great. Obviously feeding, lots of full meals, has a full belly. Very content. Good ambulation. Good vitality. Looks terrific. Signature black and white, in full colour,” said San Diego Zoo veterinarian P.K. Robbins. The cub [...]

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I have no idea who you were, or what you were doing in the town centre on that weekday morning. What is probably for you a tiny, long forgotten incident had a profound impact on me and helped me on a very difficult day. You had no way of knowing that the funeral procession passing along the [...]

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Former party girl Peaches Geldof has certainly silenced her critics by proving that her mothering skills are second to none. The daughter of rocker Bob Geldof, who became notorious for her wild partying lifestyle, looked happy and relaxed as she stepped out with her fiancé Thomas Cohen and their newborn son Astala in London. A [...]

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She has honed the physiques of “supermums” Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez and Madonna, so when the celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson whipped herself back into shape only six weeks after giving birth – by caesarean section – to her daughter, Penelope, it was a fitting advertisement for her exercise DVD, The Pregnancy Project. However, it was [...]

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The morning sickness drug, Thalidomide, caused thousands of babies to be born with birth defects in the 1950s and 1960s, with many victims suffering shortened arms and legs or no limbs at all. On Friday the CEO of German pharmaceutical company, Gruenenthal, Harald Stock, who’s company manufactured Thalidomide, issued an apology to its victims. via [...]

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid tells the stories of Greg Heffley, the twelve year old who makes everyone laugh. His slightly condescending, but also world-weary and sarcastic style makes for a hysterically funny book, especially his various criticisms of family members. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (Book 3) by Jeff Kinney The [...]

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A British couple are expecting a child by a surrogate mother from an Indian “baby factory”, it was reported today. Dominic and Octavia Orchard went to a clinic in Hyderabad to get round a ban in Britain on commercial surrogacy, according to the Daily Mail. The baby, due at the end of the year, will [...]

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A 16-year-old student was fatally injured Friday evening after he stuck his head out of a bus’s roof hatch, and the vehicle drove through an overpass on the George Washington Bridge. Daniel Fernandez was riding through New York on a double-decker bus with friends celebrating a Sweet 16 party when he opened up the roof [...]

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Emily Small told her baby daughter Evie she loved her every day for 22 months, but the girl never heard her mother’s words once. Evie was born profoundly deaf but it was not until she was 16 months old that tests revealed she had no hearing nerves, meaning an auditory brainstem implant – or bionic [...]

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The father of the boy had been walking along the River Thames near Penton Road in Laleham, Surrey, with the pram and another child on Friday morning. It is not known how pram fell over the edge of the river bank, but passers-by rushed to help the father rescue the child from the water at [...]

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A chilling recent episode exemplifies what, to an outsider, is yet another a shocking feature of our state “child protection” system. This is the ruthless way in which, when children are taken into care, social workers try to drive a wedge between their new charges and members of their families who have done them no [...]

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Five people, including a child, saved from a sinking speedboat today were lucky to be alive – not one was wearing a lifejacket, according to coastguards An RNLI crew was called to a stricken vessel anchored off Bournemouth Beach at around 2pm this afternoon. Four adults and one child were on the boat when it [...]

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So far this year there have been more than 3,500 cases of the disease, which can be fatal, in England and Wales – three times higher than in the whole of last year, when the current outbreak began. The cases this year include six deaths, all in babies aged under three months. Babies are currently [...]

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A plain-package law for tobacco products would reduce the appeal of smoking, according to a new study. This follows the recent legislation in Australia banning logos from cigarette packaging and the English ban on tobacco promotion in April this year. England has some of the strictest anti-smoking laws in the world with advertising and smoking [...]

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Grandparents are saving their children a staggering £11 billion in childcare costs each year as families struggle with rising costs, it was claimed. The average grandparent spends ten hours a week looking after their grandchildren with just three per cent paid for their time. It has been estimated 5.8 million grandparents look after young ones [...]

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Women having fertility treatment might get better results by putting their embryos on ice, doctors said last night. Normally in IVF, the embryos thought to have the best chance of resulting in a pregnancy are used in treatment a few days after they are made in a dish. Any that are left over can be [...]

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With her long blonde hair and pretty pink dress, she looked a picture of childhood innocence. Then came the lipstick, the make-up and the tight-fitting swimsuit. By the time they had finished with Ocean Orrey she might have stepped out of the pages of a fashion catalogue. But Ocean – crowned ‘Most Beautiful’ in a [...]

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A baby born with a heart defect and kept alive with daily doses of Viagra has delighted her parents by saying her first words. Cerys Small is always smiling because despite a shaky start in life she is finally on the road to recovery. The 19-month-old toddler, was also born with no spleen and problems [...]

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President Barack Obama is on daddy duty on Tuesday, as his eldest daughter, Malia, starts her first day of high school with the First Lady out of town. Michelle Obama will miss the momentous occasion as she prepares for her speech on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Speaking [...]

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Thousands of empty shops will never re-open and new uses must be found for them if the blight of ‘ghost towns’ is to be halted. The warning comes in a report – Too Many Shops – which reveals that the percentage of shops that are empty has risen to a high of more than one [...]

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When Tracey and Miguel Moore-Shakes carried their toddler Jayden into Birmingham City Hospital one evening with breathing difficulties, they desperately hoped he would receive urgent medical help. The two-year-old suffered from asthma, but his wheezing had become so severe that they were worried something was very wrong. What happened next will haunt them for the [...]

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Ask my father what happened in 1971 and he’ll remember it as the year that Mill Reef, the most famous horse he ever trained, won the Derby. What he won’t remember is that 1971 was also the year that I was born. One of the first photographs of me, following my apparently inconsequential arrival in [...]

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They’ve been forced to endure a fairly testing journey into parenthood after welcoming baby Dolly into the world two months ago. But Alex Reid has vowed to do ‘everything’ in his power to make his strained relationship with Chantelle Houghton work. Playing down reports of a split, the 37-year-old cage fighter insists he only left [...]

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Schools could be putting pupils’ personal data at risk by failing to store it securely, according to new research. The study suggests that schools are increasingly collecting students’ biometric data, such as fingerprints, but do not always think about the security issues surrounding this. It found that almost half of schools have regulations on personal [...]

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A nine-year-old British boy has drowned while swimming at a beach in the United Emirates. The child, whose name is unknown but is believed to have been of Somali origin, suddenly drifted away from shore in the Al Mamzar area of Sharjah. He had been at the beach with his family at around 4.30pm last [...]

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The full extraordinary story of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden has been revealed for the first time by a member of the elite team that killed the arch terrorist in his secret lair in Pakistan. Bin Laden was shot in the head by a ‘point man’ from the crack US Navy Seals unit as [...]

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Police were called to a block of flats in Tidworth, Wiltshire, on Saturday afternoon after paramedics discovered the bodies. A man believed to be aged 36 was found hanging and two children believed locally to be aged three and 11 were also dead. Police said the children’s mother had been informed of their deaths. On [...]

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When you have a job, you expect to be better off than if you were unemployed, but for parents that’s often not the case. Although they are working, sometimes in professional jobs, some are effectively doing it for nothing. Soaring childcare costs, stagnant salaries and government cuts to tax credits and benefits, have led to [...]

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Andrew Rawnsley (“Michael Gove has made a cruel mess of exam grades. Discuss”, Comment) is right in suggesting that the just solution is “to scrap GCSEs and A-levels altogether and start again with new exams under new names”. The blueprint for such a change already exists – the Tomlinson report of 2004 – which set [...]

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