Parent Pages new website

DIY divorces being proposed to force couples to avoid court apart from in the most acrimonious cases

Controversial review still favours mother over father in custody battles, critics claim. Badly behaved grandparents ‘damage’ children because they interfere in divorces and ramp up conflict between couples, it was claimed today.

Acrimonious couples also use their parents as ‘weapons’ to get one over their partners as they break-up, according to the Government’s legal advisor on families.

David Norgrove has been leading a review on family law and said while he accepted that grandparents are often ‘extremely important in a child’s life’ they can be demanding when it comes to access to their grandchildren.

He says this can mean that children do not always come first in a bitter divorce, hurting the innocent youngsters involved.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Despite all those Tory promises, fathers and grandparents will still be denied the right to see children after a divorce

Fathers will be denied the right to have a ‘meaningful relationship’ with their families, report suggests
Iain Duncan Smith will fight to do more for men, his aides pledge. Fathers and grandparents will not be given any legal right to see children after a break-up, under the biggest changes to family law in a generation.

In what was immediately denounced as a ‘betrayal’ of the family, a major report today rules against giving men shared or equal time with their children when a relationship ends.

It suggests fathers will even be denied the legal right to maintain a ‘meaningful relationship’ with their families, as this ‘would do more harm than good’.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Grandparents can cause “damage” to children during divorces by increasing conflict between couples, according to a government adviser on family law.

David Norgrove, the chairman of an official review on family justice which is published today, said some couples used their parents as a “weapon” during contested divorce cases.
The comments came as Mr Norgrove unveiled plans for parents to go through more “do-it-yourself” divorces to speed up settlements.
He also confirmed plans, disclosed by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, that divorced fathers would be denied a legal right to a relationship with their children.
He said grandparents could be “extremely important in a child’s life” but some made problems worse during divorces by demanding the right to have contact with the children.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Society would “simply collapse” without the support of elderly people who care for their grandchildren and volunteer for charity, Iain Duncan Smith has said.

The Work and Pensions Secretary called for a change in attitude to ageing, and urged companies to value older workers for their “experience”.
The state should “recognise and reward” the role grandparents play in keeping families together, he said.
However, the minister suggested that more middle-aged people should be encouraged to stay in work for longer through a redefined concept of retirement.
Mr Duncan Smith’s comments follow the government’s decision to abolish the default retirement age and raise the age at which the state pension can be claimed.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Baby Azra’s name means ‘Help’ in Hebrew
She survived more than two days naked in freezing conditions
Quake ‘was like the judgment day’ says one survivor
Official death toll rises to 432 overnight

Rescue attempts criticised for not providing enough shelter for homeless
Ten-year-old pulled to safety after 54 hours. She’s only 14 days old but baby Azra has seen enough drama to last her a lifetime.

Rescuers clapped and cheered as they pulled the infant alive from the rubble of the Turkish earthquake – almost 48 hours after the disaster struck.

The youngster, whose name means ‘help’ in Hebrew, survived despite being naked in freezing conditions. Her mother and grandmother were later plucked alive from the same collapsed building.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A couple have been ordered to dismantle a climbing frame they bought for their granddaughters to play with after they moved it just 20 feet from its original location.

Grandparents Carolyn and Gerry English, from East Claydon, Buckinghamshire, moved the wooden climbing frame from next door after buying it from their neighbours who were moving house.

However, Aylesbury Vale District Council ordered the pair to take down the frame having received an anonymous complaint because it contravened planning rules. ‘We are very disappointed as our little granddaughters will be,’ said Mrs English.

She continued: ‘We both felt the committee members were basically sympathetic and showed a lot of common sense but were persuaded by the officer that granting us change of use would set a precedent for a situation that doesn’t actually exist.’

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Many look after their grandchildren so their parents can work. Hats off to them

This week, thousands of grandparents will pack their suitcases and take themselves off for a welcome break as the grandchildren for whom they normally care enjoy half term with their parents. Holiday providers have reported a significant increase in grandparents taking their breaks during school holidays, a reflection of the fact that so many now undertake regular childcare duties for their families.

As the cost of childcare soars, and the pressure to retain a job increases while household incomes plummet, the role a grandparent plays in caring for their grandchildren has taken on an added value. While childcare may be a happy undertaking, and mutually beneficial for adult and child, it nevertheless requires that some sacrifices are made. For instance, the freedom that retirement may bring is inevitably curtailed, as are some of the guilty pleasures, unless, of course, they can be shared with a six-year-old.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

Intellectual curiosity is rightly admired, but the accumulation of facts for facts sake is a mug’s game.

The capital of New Zealand, the date of the Battle of Waterloo, the boiling point of water, the six wives of Henry VIII, the longest river in Africa, the names of David Beckham’s children, the colours of the rainbow, the last three winners of The X Factor… we all have that sort of tat cluttering up our brains, but how much of it do we actually need? Shouldn’t we be making a determined effort to forget the lot?
That’s the intriguing question raised by new research published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. People who forget pointless facts have a better memory for important things, according to researchers at the University of Illinois – which should not be surprising, but runs so counter to the Zeitgeist that most people will instinctively discard the research and its implications.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Roslynn Price was holding her 14-month-old granddaughter when she was attacked

Two 999 calls made – but police officers were ‘unavailable’. A Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator who was beaten in the street while she was holding her baby granddaughter had to wait 16 hours for police to come to her aid.

Despite two 999 calls being made, police were ‘too busy’ to come to the aid of grandmother Roslynn Price as she was assaulted following a neighbour dispute.

Mrs Price said she was slapped and kicked before a man threatened to kill her if she called police – all while she held her 14-month-old granddaughter in her arms.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Over-75s are being left lonely and isolated particularly in London, a think-tank has warned, and more resources should be used for their care rather than younger pensioners.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the City of London Corporation’s City Bridge Trust published a report that quoted recent research suggesting nearly a fifth (18%) of over-75s “felt lonely much of the time during the past week”, compared to 11.8% of 65 to 74-year-olds.

While a quarter (25.6%) of 65 to 74-year-olds live alone, nearly half (44.5%) of over-75s do so.

Clare Thomas, chief grants officer at the City Bridge Trust, said: “We asked IPPR to help us further our understanding of the complex and diverse needs of London’s fast increasing older population and to help us target our resources most efficiently.

Source: London Evening Standard>> Read full article and comment

Despite opposition from her children and grandchildren to her marrying a civil servant 24 years her junior, the 85-year-old Duchess of Alba – who is said to hold more titles than any European noble – exchanged vows yesterday at her 15th-century Palacio de las Dueñas in Seville, in southern Spain.

Onlookers and journalists camped outside the palace walls all morning to catch a glimpse of Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva and her beau, Alfonso Diez. Souvenir wedding pins, wristbands and T-shirts circulated throughout the Andalusian capital as people turned the adjacent streets into a party.

Following the nuptials, the couple emerged down a red carpet flanked by flashing cameras, microphones and waving fans. The Duchess tossed her bouquet into the crowd, waved to the revellers, and removed her shoes to perform a quick sevillana dance.

The wedding was attended by around 40 friends and family, a small affair compared to the Duchess’s first marriage in 1947 which was hailed as the world’s most expensive wedding. The gossip website Divinity reported that the menu included both Spanish and British dishes: gazpacho, rice with spicy lobster (her favourite meal), beef Wellington and rice pudding.

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

Artist Barbara Loftus has used her Jewish mother’s life in Nazi Germany as the basis for much of her work. But as she tells Laura Barnett it was years before she discovered the full story

One afternoon in 1994, Barbara Loftus was having coffee with her mother Hildegard, in her Brighton flat, when Hildegard began to talk about the day the Nazis came to confiscate the china. It was a few days after Kristallnacht, she said, when two stormtroopers carrying a tea chest knocked on the door of the family’s Berlin flat and demanded that Loftus’s grandmother open the china cabinet. Then the officers removed each porcelain figurine, wrapped it in tissue paper, and laid it in the chest, before doing the same with the family silver.

This was the first time in Loftus’s life that her mother, then almost 80, had spoken openly of the events that led up to her decision to leave Germany in March 1939, at the age of 23. Until then, Loftus had known only the barest facts: that her mother’s bourgeois Jewish family had arranged for Hildegard to leave for England alone, planning to follow her later. And that events had tragically overtaken their plans: Loftus’s grandmother, grandfather and uncle Heinz were deported to Auschwitz in 1942, and did not survive.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

For the past two years, the Mail’s Robert Hardman (pictured right) has been granted privileged access to the world of the Queen.

The result, in his magisterial new book Our Queen, which we serialise exclusively today and next week, is the most in-depth and revealing royal portrait in years.

In part one of this unmissable series, Prince William talks intimately and at length, for the first time, about his remarkable grandmother. The engagement had just been announced. Catherine Middleton had given her first television interview, with Prince William sitting proudly by her side. And it was now time to plan the wedding.

Eager to include all their close friends in the great day, the young couple began to draw up the guest-list. But they found they had been pipped to the post: Buckingham Palace was there first.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Police found house they were staying at littered with empty aerosol cans

They found raw meat left on a bed along with half-eaten food
Children’s grandmother insists her son and his partner are ‘good parents’.

As traffic thunders past only feet away on the busy dual carriageway, a barefoot boy of four and his sister of two toddle along.

Seemingly oblivious to the danger, the siblings then try to cross as cars, a lorry and a van whizz by at up to 70mph.

As tragedy appears inevitable, a Good Samaritan materialises. Driver Linda Young pulls over on the side of the A38 and leaps out just as the children step into the nearside lane in front of a lorry.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Family break-up, divorce and the decline of marriage are producing millions of lonely middle-aged Britons.

There is a ‘considerable increase’ in numbers living alone and facing an old age without the help and support of children or partners, according to a report from the Office for National Statistics.

It suggested one in ten men and one in five women are on their own by the age of 60. The good news for the middle-aged is that they are much more prosperous than counterparts in the past. They have the benefits of better education and longer careers than their parents and grandparents, and the great majority own their own homes.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Boy was starved of daylight and not allowed to leave the house, even for medical treatment

A mother has been spared jail despite abducting her child and hiding him in a secret room the size of a washing machine for two years while claiming he was missing.

Shannon Wilfong, 32, of Franklin County, Illinois, took Ricky, now nine, and only let him out of his hiding place at night because she feared losing a custody battle with the father.

The child was never allowed to leave his grandmother’s house, not even for medical care, and lived without natural light because Wilfong insisted on having all windows covered so nobody could see in.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A fireman is taking part in the Great North Run to raise money for a girl badly burned in a caravan fire.

Tony Reaney and his colleagues in Flint were shocked by the plight of Emmy Taylor, three, who is from the town.

He has a personal connection to the tragedy because he knows her grandmother, Denise Taylor, who works as a paramedic and was also injured.

Emmy’s grandfather Rob Taylor, 58, and his son Andy, 26 – Emmy’s uncle – died near Barmouth, Gwynedd, in June.

She is still receiving treatment at Alder Hey’s children’s hospital in Liverpool after the fire in June.

Source: BBC NEWS>> Read full article and comment

Victim’s girlfriend heard attack over the phone
‘My son is stabbing my grandson’: Court hears chilling transcript

An uncle stabbed his 14-year-old nephew to death as he sat watching television with his grandmother, a court heard today.

Jordan Cooper suffered nine separate knife wounds at the hands of Alan Cooper, 32, in the ferocious attack over a telephone call.

Young Jordan had been talking to his girlfriend on the phone while sitting up watching TV in his grandmother’s bed when his uncle attacked, Newcastle Crown Court heard today

Grandmother Susan Smith, who’d been lying next to Jordan, tried to protect him before calling 999 as the assault continued.

‘Please, please help, my son is stabbing my grandson,’ Mrs Smith said in a transcript of the call which was read out by the court.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Youngster had been grounded on night she disappeared after row

Police: ‘Ten days is a long time for a 14-year-old girl to be on her own’. A schoolgirl who went missing ten days ago could be being held against her will, say police.

Seren Barnard, 14, disappeared from her home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, and police are now treating her disappearance as critical.

She lives with her grandmother, Yvonne Pollock, 61, who today made an emotional plea for her safe return.

Local police are working with Devon and Cornwall Police in Newquay where Seren’s father lives but so far there has been no trace of her.

According to police she does not have a mobile phone and only had a small amount of money when she disappeared.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

The finest chefs are often inspired by recipes they remember from their youth. Charlotte Philby asks a selection to recall the dish that evokes their fondest memories

Hélène Darroze: French toast with figs: ‘My grandmother used to make me this dish when I came in hungry after school’

French toast is the dish I associate most strongly with childhood. Even now, if I see it on a menu, I have to have it. It used to be made for me by my grandmother who was of a generation of women who didn’t want to put anything in the dustbin; she taught us to use up every last bit of food. Every other day or so, she would make French toast from days-old bread, which she would serve with some marmalade or jam and a little bit of cream. It could be eaten as a meal on its own when we came in hungry from school, or as a dessert after dinner. I always knew if she’d made it by the smell as soon as I walked through the front door.

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

Pushy parents are increasingly intervening to make sure sons and daughters win places at leading universities, it has emerged.

Admissions tutors told how rising numbers of mothers and fathers – along with grandparents – were accompanying children on university open days, writing their application form and even fighting appeals on their behalf if they are rejected.
One university said the number of parents “checking out” institutions alongside sons or daughters had more than doubled in recent years while another told how inquiries from parents now outnumbered those from prospective students.
The move has coincided with a rise in the cost of a degree, with families increasingly dipping into savings to cover course fees. Student fees were set at £1,000 in 1998 before tripling to £3,000 in 2006.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Grandmothers are to be trained in parenting as an increasing number are having to care for their children’s babies.

A new course has been launched to provide updates to pensioners on the world of child development since they reared their own brood.

The five-week programme, one of the first of its kind, will cover topics such as resuscitation, weaning and community support, as well as modern equipment. Midwife Sally Underdown is running the classes with Grannynet, a website set up to support the UK’s seven million grandmothers, in Burham, Kent.

It comes as reports suggest more grandparents being called upon by their sons and daughters to look after their children.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A US man who forced his three young grandsons to hike 18 miles in scorching heat at the Grand Canyon and denied them food and water, has been jailed on six counts of child abuse.

The boys, ages 12, 9 and 8, told investigators that they had been hit, pushed, choked, pinched and squeezed during trips on a popular trail at the canyon’s South Rim last month.
On the latest hike over the weekend down the Bright Angel Trail, temperatures reached 108 degrees (42 Celsius). A ranger spotted the group with binoculars on the trail and saw Christopher Carlson shoving the oldest boy and whipping him with a rolled-up T-shirt, authorities said.
National Park Service Special Agent Chris Smith testified that Carlson told authorities that the boys had been overweight and that he thought the hike would get them into shape.
“He told me that he loved his grandchildren very much, but at the same time there were tough people in the world and his grandchildren needed to be tough as well,” Mr Smith said.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

As a grandparent I try, I really do, not to meddle in the upbringing of my five grandchildren. There are many times when I’ve had to bite my tongue when it comes to my children’s own child-rearing techniques.

There are also many times when words have slipped out of their own accord and been regretted.
It’s not that I think my sons and their wives are bad parents; just that — in common with so many parents of today — they seem to exercise an arbitrary mixture of over-indulgence and strictness that I just can’t understand.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Children are ill-disciplined, bad-mannered, disrespectful and treated too leniently – according to their grandparents.

Changing attitudes mean most parents no longer reprimand their offspring with the age-old methods of a smack or sending them to bed without dinner because they fear upsetting them.

But their grandparents believe this is to the detriment of the children’s manners and moral values, research has revealed. Instead of traditional punishments, modern parents tend to favour softer options, such as stopping their children from watching television or confiscating their mobile phones.

As a result, two-thirds of grandparents believe their grandchildren are not as firmly disciplined as their own children were.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A grandmother and granddaughter suffered serious injuries when they were thrown from a fairground ride.

The 58-year-old woman and the four-year-old girl were flipped from the Jungle River log flume on the seafront in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, yesterday.
Medics from the Yorkshire Air Ambulance airlifted the woman to hospital following the incident, which is believed have occurred when the log flume jammed.
It is the second serious accident at a fairground in less than a week.
Horrified crowds watched as the accident in Bridlington happened at 3.28pm yesterday.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

A 10-year-old boy collapsed and died in front of his twin brother after his parents refused to let him drink water for five day, it is claimed.

Jonathan James died from dehydration in Dallas after his father and step mother allegedly denied him water as punishment after he took some guitar strings from one of his siblings.

Michael Ray James and Tina Maria Alberson have been arrested and charged with injury to a child. The boy’s grandmother said that his twin brother had wanted to help, but was afraid he would be punished too.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

The comedian talks about his family

I grew up with three generations under one roof. My mother’s parents used to live in a smaller house, then my dad – who was a GP – had an opportunity to start his own practice. This old, rambling house became available and my grandfather, who was a stonemason and builder, built an extension. The plan was that the practice would be at one end and my grandparents would temporarily live at the other end. But the reality was that my grandfather loved to hold court so he’d be at the dining table every afternoon when I came back from school and the arrangement became permanent.

My grandparents used to debrief me when I got home from school. My dad didn’t have time as he was working so when I got in I’d have to prepare this kind of report on the day. Now I’ve noticed with my own son, it’s something I’ve found myself doing. But when I ask he generally answers, “I dunno,” whereas when my father asks him he’ll give a full report.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

When Neville Alexander used to visit his maternal grandmother Bisho Jarsa as a boy, he never suspected the extraordinary story of how she had come from Ethiopia to the South African city of Port Elizabeth.

Bisho was one of a group of Ethiopian slaves freed by a British warship in 1888 off the coast of Yemen, then taken round the African coast and placed in the care of missionaries in South Africa.

“We were overawed in her presence and by the way she would mumble to herself in this language none of us understood,” recalls Mr Alexander, now 74.

This was Ethiopia’s Oromo language, Bisho’s mother tongue, which she reverted to as she grew older.

Mr Alexander, who was a political prisoner in the 1960s, sharing Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, is today one of South Africa’s most eminent educationists.

Source: BBC NEWS>> Read full article and comment

One in four children alive in Britain today will reach 100

Millions of Britons will be forced to rely on handouts from their children when they retire, a leading expert at the Bank of England warned yesterday.

In an alarming speech, Martin Weale urged Britons to wake up to the fact that their level of saving is too low and they are spending too much.

He said this country had ‘a long history of not saving enough’, and people’s refusal to do anything about the problem was creating a ticking timebomb. The top economist said people were deluding themselves about the type of retirement they could expect, unless they were happy to work ‘much later’.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

When it opened 90 years ago, lessons were optional and the children made the rules. A radical alternative to conventional education – or anarchy? Former pupils look back

Earlier this month, seven generations of past and present pupils gathered to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Summerhill, our progressive, controversial alma mater. The school was set up, in a rambling Victorian house in Leiston, Suffolk, by AS Neill, a teacher who so loathed the strict discipline he was expected to impose on pupils that he came up with a radically different method of education – to allow children as much freedom as they pleased.

For me, it was also a celebration of my grandmother’s legacy, for in August 1921 Lilian Neustatter co-founded Summerhill. The genesis was an invitation to tea. Lilian had sent my father to the co-ed King Alfred School in Hampstead, where Neill was a teacher. She invited him to their house and was captivated by the gangly Scotsman’s dream of a school where pupils could make their own rules.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

His 50-year-old grandmother also cut in attack
Suspect shot at police with pellet gun before arrest
Teen had been arrested in June after similar assault

A 14-year-old boy is in custody after using a sword to stab his 77-year-old great-grandmother to death and injure his grandmother, police say.

Family members suggested the suspect, who also allegedly wounded his grandmother in the arm, had been angered by being told to stop playing computer games, according to CBS Atlanta.

Authorities in Douglasville, Georgia, had to taser the boy in order to arrest him, after he shot at them with a pellet gun during a stand-off.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Ceri Radford hopes that JK Rowling will write a book about the fantastic stories she uncovers on the BBC One genealogy programme, Who Do You Think You Are?

Nobody feels sorry for JK Rowling. She is the most staggeringly successful author in the world, worth an estimated $1billion, with hundreds of millions of avid young fans clamouring after her every written word. But in one sense at least, she is to be pitied. The pressure she now faces in her career must be immense. After creating Harry Potter, where can you go next as a writer?
Having watched her appearance on Who Do You Think You Are?, I sincerely hope that the answer is into her own past. JK – or Jo, the pleasantly normal person behind the publishing phenomenon façade – uncovers all the ingredients for a superb historical pot-boiler in the story of her ancestors. Promisingly, she seems particularly drawn to her great great grandmother Salomé Schuch, a woman who fled the troubled province of Alsace Lorraine to work as a maid in Paris.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Grandparents will spend more than £2bn on family breaks this year – almost 10% of UK’s annual outlay on holidays

Grandparents are increasingly funding family holidays, according to a new survey.

Grandparents will spend more than £2bn on family breaks this year, the poll by the Gnu Insurance company found.

That spending represents nearly 10% of the UK’s annual outlay on holidays.

The poll of 1,000 over-50s found that 43% in this age bracket have paid for their children and grandchildren to go on a holiday since becoming grandparents.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

Liam Drew’s grandmother became ill, at 80, just before he moved to the US. He knew their farewell might be permanent – so he wrote her a letter, and delivered it by hand

I put the on kettle to boil and took two well-worn mugs from a cupboard filled with unused china cups and saucers. Dropping the teabag into the teapot, I tensed, trying not to let my sadness overcome me. The tight, sniffling inhalation that escaped could not fail to be recognised for what it was but, afterwards, the silence continued untouched.

Throughout all my memories, tea-making was a part of my grandmother’s kitchen. In casual celebration or in a family crisis, or just because that’s what we always did, putting the kettle on had always brightened this room. Normally, I would be seated, chatting, at the circular table behind me but today I had sought diversion in this brief process. I tried to focus on the cups and spoons, or to contemplate the pristine work surfaces or to stare outwards at the immaculate but plain backyard, any possible distraction in a bid for a calm that would not come.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

Georgina Baillie fell out with her grandad after the infamous ‘Sachsgate’ media row. Who reconciled them? An unlikely new friend – Adam Ant. By Joanna Moorhead

I’m so sorry,” says Georgina Baillie, with a look of genuine horror on her perfectly made-up face, “but the dog has farted. It’s got to go … Adam! Adam! Can you get the dog out of here?” A second later, Adam Ant – for it is he – is at the door, a slight figure in jeans and a black T-shirt, with a thin moustache, a turquoise bandana in his hair, and a symphony of colours on his finger and toenails. “Sorry,” he echoes, as he sweeps up the offending dog in his tattoo–covered arms. “Terrible, isn’t it?” He smiles at Georgina – Georgie Girl, as he calls her – and she smiles back. “He’s brilliant,” she says, as the door closes behind the apologetic Adam, and the smelly dog. “He’s been such a great friend to me – I owe him such a lot.”

Georgina does owe him a lot, and for a great deal more than removing his dog from our olfactory zone (welcome though it is). Because, over the last few months, Adam has been the unexpected architect of a rapprochement in Georgina’s life – he has brought about a reconciliation between her and her grandfather, the actor Andrew Sachs, Manuel of Fawlty Towers fame, after their relationship was punctured by the extraordinary – and extraordinarily public – debacle in October 2008 that became known as “Sachsgate”.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

A 96-year-old British grandmother who feared she was going to be deported from Australia has received an assurance from the government that she can remain in the country.

Gladys Jefferson moved to Tasmania on a tourist visa from the Isle of Wight to be with her daughter, Bridget Grigg, after her memory began to fail 12 months ago.
But she was recently told that her application for a “contributory parent” visa, which allows parents to join their children in Australia provided they can support themselves financially, had been rejected.
Mrs Jefferson and her family believed she was about to be kicked out of the country. Mrs Grigg said that if her mother was deported she would have to sell her business and leave her own children to look after Mrs Jefferson in Britain.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

To have expected the real grandmother-to-be back home to share my amusement was perhaps naive.

You get used to the staring here. Angelenos can’t quite place the accent, are baffled by our yellow teeth, white limbs and red faces, and laugh out loud if you ask for the “loo” or the “bill”. So when I detected an old lady in frosted lipstick scrutinising me a little more ardently than usual in The Coffee Bean this week, I put it down to my Britishness and threw her an apologetic smile.
“Excuse me honey,” she whispered, glancing at my pregnant stomach on her way out. “I hope you won’t think me presumptuous if I give you this. Just that you may need me in a few months’ time.” “Rent-a-Granny” read the business card: “The one-stop agency for all your quality domestic staffing needs. Because you can always trust your Grandma.”

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

One in four families are taking grandparents away this summer. Good idea or guaranteed disaster?

Sun, sand, sea and… stretched out on the lounger next to me on the charming French Ile de Ré, Grandma. Eighty-nine years old, quite fond of a Silk Cut purple and in full possession of all her mental faculties. Also, bluntly spoken, with a lovely turn of phrase (“Well, we were sitting there like plums…” as she once complained) and altogether very engaging company. In short, as one in four families are now discovering while taking their grandparents on their summer break, the perfect companion for a week’s holiday. Now that I’ve managed to get her here.
We poked around in the local market (apricots got the Grandma thumbs-up; crates of slithery live eels didn’t); walked along the shore, looking out towards the oyster beds; ate croissants for breakfast and crêpes for tea; and pottered around, soaking up the blazing, vision-saturating blues and whites of the landscape. It was idyllic; it was lovely; but, goodness me, it wasn’t easy prising her out of Yorkshire, on to a plane and over to France.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Twenty year olds are three times more likely to reach their 100th birthdays than their grandparents and twice as likely as their parents, official figures show.

A baby born this year is almost eight times more likely to reach 100 than one born 80 years ago, according to the figures issued by the Department for Work and Pensions.

A girl born this year has a one in three chance of reaching their 100th birthday, while boys have a one in four chance.

The figures, based on predictions by the Office for National Statistics, show that in 2066 there will be at least half a million people aged over 100.

The statistics highlight the increased pressure on the country’s finances, with Pensions Minister Steve Webb warning Britons will need to save more.

Source: Thisislondon>> Read full article and comment

A baby girl born today is eight times more likely to live to 100 than one born 80 years ago, government figures have indicated.

The analysis also shows that 20 year-olds are three times more likely to reach 100 than their grandparents, and twice as likely as their parents.
The rapidly ageing population in the UK suggests that by 2066 there will be half a million people aged 100 or more.
Ministers will today use the information to argue that reform of pensions is vital and more people must take provision for their retirement seriously.
Lord McFall of Alcluith, the former chairman of the Treasury select committee, earlier this week published a report into retirement schemes and said workers planning to retire after 2020 faced a “bleak old age”.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

J K Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter novels and one of Britain’s most famous lone parents, has discovered she comes from a long line of single mothers while taking part in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.

The novelist learnt during her research for the programme that her great-grandmother, Lizzie, her great-great-grandmother, Salomé, and her great-great-great-grandmother, Christine, raised their children alone.
Her maternal grandmother, Louisa, is also believed to have been born out of wedlock.
Rowling, whose personal wealth is thought to be half a billion pounds, wrote the first book of the Harry Potter series following her divorce while living on benefits in a cold Edinburgh flat with her baby daughter. The experience left her clinically depressed.
“What I’m very struck by is how many single mothers I’m descended from in this line of the family,” she said in an interview for the programme.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

He thinks the teenage father of the child is a ‘decent young man’
Young mum Tia admits ‘she wouldn’t be happy’ if newborn Gracie became pregnant at 14

A 29-year-old man who has become one of Britain’s youngest grandparents was left red-faced after nurses asked him to prove he was over 16 as he tried to visit his daughter’s baby.

Unemployed Shem Davies was overjoyed when 14-year-old Tia gave birth to Gracie earlier this month.

But when he tried to visit the ward, maternity nurses thought the fresh-faced granddad was in fact the teenage father of Gracie and asked him to prove his age.

Shem and former girlfriend Kelly John, 30, became parents to Tia at the age of 15. Their daughter’s boyfriend, Jordan Williams, is 15.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

When her 85-year-old granny moved in, BRIDGET HARRISON scarcely imagined how tough it would be… or how rewarding

Looking back on life, it’s strange to think how it is the smallest little details that can have the greatest impact.

In my own case, it was the sink taps my grandmother left on one night. For it was when my parents received a frantic 2am call from her neighbours saying ‘Momma’, as we called her, had flooded her bathroom again that they realised she could no longer cope on her own.

The hundred miles between her home in Birmingham and ours in London already felt too far when she phoned each night to say in an uncertain little voice that she had made it into bed.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A baby was taken to intensive care after a locum doctor from Greece working at a Barking clinic allegedly failed to diagnose his meningitis, telling his mother he was just teething.

Archie McCoy, of Dagenham, was in hospital for 10 days, including four nights in intensive care, after the GP dismissed a swelling on his head and prescribed adult teething gel, it is claimed.

Abbie Parsons, 20, mother of the six-month-old boy, took him to a local hospital after his grandmother, Tina McCoy, was shocked by his “sky-high” temperature.

Doctors immediately diagnosed meningitis and sent Archie to a specialist unit at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington where he was put in intensive care. During his stay, he failed to respond to drugs and his heart almost stopped beating.

Source: Thisislondon>> Read full article and comment

Pensioner goes on crash diet so she can play with granddaughter

A pensioner who ballooned to 20 stone after becoming addicted to jam sandwiches has lost almost half her body weight so that she can play with her granddaughter.

Mary Grief, 66, was left with severe pain in her legs and feet after she piled on the pounds by eating a staggering 28 jam sandwiches every week.

But the birth of the retired nurse’s first grandchild, Tilly-May, inspired her to battle the bulge and she swapped her unhealthy jam addiction for fruit and salads.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

They saw depressions, wars, economic uncertainty. In these uncertain times, we need to ask what they did, how they coped

I’ve been thinking a lot about grandparents recently, which is strange because mine are long gone. The only grandparent I remember well is my mother’s mother, who succumbed to dementia when I was about 15. She died a few years later.

That was 20 years ago. I’ve never thought about missing grandparents, until last year, when I moved next door to Lily. Lily is 86 and has lived in the same house all her life. She goes on a train trip to the seaside every Wednesday, and has her hair done every Friday. We practically share a garden so I see her quite often: she is absolutely fascinating. I love talking to her but often feel strangely upset afterwards. Some of her stories are distressing: how her sister died leaving a baby, which she brought up; how her father, a warden, died when an incendiary bomb exploded.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

Older people are important in establishing kinships and would have been essential to survival

Countless generations have relied on grandparents for childcare, emotional support and a helping hand.

Now a theory claims that the older generation may have played a key role in the evolution of mankind.

Fossil experts say the number of grandparents shot up dramatically 30,000 years ago as people started to live longer.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Grandparents are not only important for cuddles, cakes and good advice, they are also key to the evolution of human civilisation, according to new research.

A number of recent studies have highlighted how helpful it was to have older people around during early human development.
Grandparents are able to babysit, make tools, teach skills and most importantly pass on vital wisdom on human relationships.
Studies carried out by the Natural History Museum in London emphasised the importance of experience in food gathering.
Professor Chris Stringer, author of The Origin of Our Species, said elders pass on knowledge of poisonous food, the location of water supplies and important skills such as toolmaking.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Grandparents barely existed until as recently as 30,000 years, research suggests, because early humans died so young.

But when people did start to survive into older age, it had “far-reaching effects” that led to the development of new tools and art forms.
The advantages that humans enjoyed by having larger families with older relatives could have helped them “out-compete” rivals such as Neanderthals, it is claimed.
A feature in the magazine Scientific American concludes: “The relation between adult survivorship and the emergence of sophisticated new cultural traditions, starting with those of the Upper Paleolithic, was almost certainly a positive feedback process.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment