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For most South Africans, the disappearance of Nelson Mandela from public life has been a source of sadness – but for his family, it has been an opportunity finally to get to know him, writes Aislinn Laing in Johannesburg.

Jailed for 27 years, president of South Africa for five and sought-after elder statesman until 2004 when he announced his retirement, he had long been a distant figure in their lives.
While everyone from Prince Charles to Baby Spice and the Pope was photographed at his side, his children and grandchildren sometimes struggled to get a look-in.
But now Nelson Mandela lives quietly at his home in Houghton, an upmarket Johannesburg suburb whose villas are shielded by high walls and electric fences, where he spends his time reading newspapers and books, eating meals prepared by his household staff and napping – or at the house he had built 550 miles away in Qunu, his childhood village in Eastern Cape.

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Feminist author Erica Jong and her daughter Molly have very different ideas about parenting and sex – one famously bohemian, the other conservative. Kira Cochrane meets them

In Erica Jong’s vast apartment, the Manhattan skyline thrusting up to my right, an image of a naked woman sprawling across a wall to my left, we are talking about sex. Specifically, nudity. Erica’s daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is with us and I’m trying to find out what it was like for her to grow up with a writer synonymous with the sexual revolution – that era of feminism, threesomes, consciousness-raising and beautiful, bountiful pubic bushes.

Molly has made some outlandish claims about her mother in the past, and it can be hard to work out what is true, what is satire. Did Erica really saunter around the house completely naked? “She was totally naked all the time,” says Molly firmly, “and my grandmother too”. She prods her mother for confirmation. “Were you naked all the time?”

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Grandmother with 24-inch nails and ‘teddy bear mom’ are new stars of My Strange Addiction

If you thought your daily foibles were a little unusual, meet the characters who put even the most extrovert among us to shame.

The new series of TLC’s My Strange Addiction, which airs this Sunday, delves into the emotional pasts of a host of individuals who are more than just a little eccentric.

Take unconventionally compulsive Jazz Ison Sinkfield, who has extraordinary 24-inch long nails.

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How children will live far longer than their grandparents

Britons born now can expect to live two decades longer than their grand- parents did, an official report said yesterday.

The continuing stretch of life expectancy means a modern toddler should have 20 more years of life than their predecessor in the years before the Second World War.

Latest calculations show that on average a girl born today will live to be 82 and a man 78 – ages that amount to a triumph for economic improvement, healthier lifestyles and working lives, and medical science.

In 1930 it was expected that a boy born that year would reach the age of 58 – so typically his life would have ended in 1988.

For a girl born in 1930, the average expected lifespan was just over 62 years.

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A teenage girl whose family has “been cursed” by hereditary breast cancer for generations faces a dilemma – should she be tested for a mutated gene which could cause the disease?

“It’s not so much that I’m scared to get the test, or I’m scared for the operation,” said Josie Bellerby, an 18-year old from York.

“It’s a decision. If you go and get the test done you can never take it back, so it’s just whether or not you want to risk feeling like part of your body might kill you.”

Josie comes from a family where breast cancer has claimed the lives of her grandmother and great-great-grandmother. Her mother, Julia, had a preventative double mastectomy when she was younger after she found out she had an increased risk of cancer.

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A girl of 10 died after becoming trapped in a trunk during a late-night children’s game of hide-and-seek.

The youngster, who was found the following morning, is believed to have suffocated while the adults of the household were asleep.

She is thought to have had a history of hiding in unusual places during games. The death occurred on Monday night in Phoenix, Arizona, where the girl, who has not been named, lived with her grandmother, aunt and uncle and several siblings.

It has been reported that the girl was playing hide-and-seek at night with her cousins, who were visiting the home.

After the adults went to bed, the children’s game continued in and around the house, late into the night.

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More serious manslaughter charge is withdrawn by prosecution
Parents plead guilty to neglecting son over 13 months
Mother and father thought to have been drinking in pub while their son drowned

The mother, father and grandmother of a toddler who died after drowning in a garden pond today pleaded guilty to child neglect.

Two-year-old Daniel Rees-Smith was found in the water at his grandmother’s home in Hanham, Bristol, on June 4 last year.

The boy’s grandmother Hilary Rees, 44, his mother Charlotte Rees-Smith, 20, and his father Andrew Marshall, 22, originally faced charges of manslaughter and neglect.

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A campaigner for fathers rights has started a hunger strike on the Prime Minister’s doorstep.

Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) founder Matt O’Connor has started the strike outside the Oxfordshire home of David Cameron and it is expected to last “weeks”, a F4J spokeswoman said.

The 44-year-old, from Andover in Hampshire, is demanding that Mr Cameron honours pre-election pledges made to the organisation about ensuring that grandparents have a right to see their grandchildren and for a legal assumption of shared parenting.

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Philip Womack on some troubled family lives, reviewing three children’s books for the 9-12 age group.

Simon Mason’s Moon Pie (David Fickling, £10.99) is an absolute delight. It is honest, and tackles a difficult subject – the descent into alcoholism of a man who has lost his wife – with great wit. The Luna family consists of Dad, Martha and Tug. Martha is “famous for red hair and neatness”. Tug is known for “eating and a trick he did with spit”. And Dad falls off the roof and embarrasses everyone continually with his strange, drunken behaviour.
Martha is an enchanting heroine: brave and sparky, and touching in her love for her younger brother. They move in to live with their grandparents, and Dad leaves their lives: it will take some broken Swarovski crystals and the film of Anne of Green Gables to bring them together again.

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A mother who almost blinded a grandmother with her stiletto heel in a drunken rage has been spared jail – so she can continue to care for her son.

Amy Beaumont left Alison Kachel needing plastic surgery after the New Year’s Eve attack.

But unemployed Beaumont, 22, was given a suspended prison sentence after a judge heard that she has a two-year-old son to look after.

Mrs Kachel wept at the news of the sentence, saying: ‘I can’t believe it. She’s got off with what she’s done to me.’

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Spanish children find rationing hard to grasp, but in essence they’d fit easily in my village school

It’s Beatrice, aged nine, on the phone from Barcelona. “Grandpa”, she says, “are you and granny Victorians?” Which turns out to mean that her form mistress is inviting the relics of generations past to describe what life was like long ago – and that the prospect of two English witnesses leavening Spanish testimony has rather enthused her. So, weeks later, here I am with my wife, time travellers from an era before Dr Who. And questions flow.

How did you get to school? I walked for a mile and a half down a Leicestershire country lane, pursued by yapping farm dogs. My wife had a small bike and pedalled along the pavements of St Annes-on-Sea with her brother. We may have been only five, but we were alone. There was not, in any case, a car to take us to school.

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Quick thinking of woman passerby saves two-year-old girl who had been left unattended in apartment in Hangzhou

A two-year-old Chinese girl left unattended fell 10 stories from her family’s apartment window but survived, thanks to a woman passing by, state media reported on Sunday.

The toddler was in a critical condition with internal bleeding and other unspecified injuries while the woman who caught her suffered a broken arm, China Central Television and the Xinhua news agency said.

The girl, named as Zhang Fangyu but known by her nickname Niu Niu, was in the care of her grandmother on Saturday afternoon when the woman left the 10th-floor apartment outside the eastern city of Hangzhou to run an errand, CCTV said.

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The letter you always wanted to write

Another round- numbered family birthday approaches and I shall not be attending. I’m steeling myself for your rebukes. I’ve held on to my reasons for many years. Here they are: Do you ever wonder why, with a wife and young family, I moved from my beloved home town? A town where I slot back so easily into my old social life? A town whose local football team I’ve continued to travel long distances to follow?

Will you believe me if I tell you about the relief we felt on the day we drove south to begin a new life?

I was happy where we were and I had the perfect job in the perfect place, but my wife was unhappy; bullied by my sibling, squeezed out by grandparental attention for our children. So I could not truly be happy there either.

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A grandmother died of a brain haemorrhage after she was told by a junior doctor she only had muscle strain, an inquest heard.

Caryl Hinton went to Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital after suffering a sudden pain in the head, blurred vision, a stiff neck and pins and needles in her hands while out shopping with her six-month-old grandson Xander.

Caryl, who has four children, went to the accident and emergency department on May 28 but was given inadequate tests, the inquest heard.

The 48-year-old was seen in the A&E department by second-year trainee Dr Amy Webster.

Dr Webster admitted that Miss Hinton, showed some classic symptoms of a leaking aneurysm in the brain but at the time but she did not seek advice from a consultant nor did she order a CT scan.

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Young hide-and-seekers in China should beware as yet another child had to be rescued by the emergency services after becoming trapped in a wall cavity.

The five-year-old boy from Hunan Province in central China was playing hide-and-seek when he slipped down a gap and became sandwiched between two walls, his grandfather told Chinese state media.
A rescue crew used a circular saw and axe to precariously smash their way to the child, who emerged with only minor injuries to be comforted by his grandmother.

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The legal furore surrounding this watercolour has fascinated BBC viewers, but the story of the family it portrays is even more gripping, says Patrick Cockburn, grandson of the sitter

There sits my grandmother, Olive Blake, as a child at a fancy dress party in the Bahamas in 1885, dressed resplendently as an Arabian princess with scarlet head-dress and broad cummerbund over a yellow dress. A fan, which looks as if it is made from peacock feathers, dangles from her left hand and beside her, dressed as Arabian princes in flowing white trousers, are her younger brothers Maurice and Arthur. No wonder their parents Sir Henry and Lady Edith Blake were pleased by the watercolour of their three children painted by the American artist Winslow Homer.

The picture, for all its troubled recent history – detailed last Sunday evening as part of a major BBC series, Fake or Fortune – has an appealing freshness and spontaneity about it and Olive and her brothers look attractive, without being overly self-conscious of their exotic costumes. There is a certain formality about their expressions and posture, as if they are conscious that their father, Sir Henry, is the governor of the Bahamas. I wonder what Olive or her parents would have made of the controversy now surrounding the re-appearance and contested ownership of this charming painting, well over a century after it was produced.

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Mutant fruit flies have helped solve one of the biggest puzzles in genetics: how the stress of starvation or drug addiction can pass on its ill effects to the sufferer’s children and grandchildren.

By Andy Coghlan

Mutant fruit flies have helped solve one of the biggest puzzles in genetics: how the stress of starvation or drug addiction can pass on its ill effects to the sufferer’s children and grandchildren.

Stress is thought to cause “epigenetic” changes that do not alter the sequence of DNA but leave chemical marks on genes that dictate how active they are. Previous studies have shown that if mice are stressed for two weeks after birth, their offspring will show signs of depression and anxiety, despite enjoying the usual levels of maternal care. And there is mounting evidence that common health problems including diabetes, obesity, mental illness and even fear could be the result of stress on parents and grandparents.

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Recently, I asked my 11-year-old grandson what he thought was the most important thing that a grandparent should be.

By ANGELA HUTH

He answered in a flash. ‘Funny,’ he said.

In the far-off days before I had any grandchildren, I often wondered what sort of grandmother I would make. My chief ambition was to be as unlike my own grandmother as possible. She was a woman so preposterously embarrassing that my sister and I refused to go out in public with her once we were old enough to argue our case.

I had vague pictures in mind of things I could do with my imagined grandchildren, how I could be. But among my good intentions, I have to admit, being funny was an element that was missing. I’m not a natural stand-up comic, and it’s too late to start lessons at the Comedy Store. I try to produce the odd joke, and if I succeed it’s because their sense of humour is of an easy level.

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Sarah Franklin grew up reading aloud to her grandfather, who was blind – a privilege that she will always treasure

By Sarah Franklin

I have an abiding memory of my grandfather, Jack. It’s 30-odd years ago; Grandad’s sitting in his customary high-backed armchair in the front room, his stick hooked behind it. I’m seven, perched next to him on a stool I’ve fetched from my grandmother’s sewing room. The Sunday afternoon light’s drifting in through the window. We’re reading aloud, our two earnest, bespectacled heads bent over the page in front of us, a finger marking the words; separated by seven decades, brought together by words.

It’s a common scene in families; except, in our case, the usual order of things is reversed. Grandad’s been blind since I was tiny. Rather than him reading to me, I’m reading to him.

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Mother reveals the heartbreak of having to remove her son from private education

By HELEN CARROLL

Despite second jobs, no holidays and ‘gifts’ from Granny many families are simply unable to afford to keep their children in the private school system, says Helen Carroll.

During Marie Deevoy’s long battle with breast cancer, she had one dying wish: for her young grandson to enjoy the benefits of a private education.

To that end, Marie left £5,000 in her will to go towards Danny’s school fees when she died two years ago, aged 68.

And last year Danny, 11, proudly realised his grandmother’s ambition by winning a place at the prestigious Arts Educational School in Chiswick, West London, whose impressive alumni includes actor Martin Clunes and prima ballerina Darcey Bussell.

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A great-grandmother has been handed a 12-month ban from Leeds United’s Elland Road ground after she invaded the football pitch despite repeated pleas that people shouldn’t step on to the turf.

Margaret Musgrove was handed the automatic ban and had her season ticket seized after she went onto the grass at the last Leeds United match of the season.
Television footage shows her stepping out of the North Stand and approaching players with her arms in the air, but club stewards then grabbed 5ft 4in-tall Margaret and hauled her into the clubs holding cells.
The 63 year-old from Bradford, West Yorks., was arrested by police but later released without charge and now Mrs Musgrove, who has 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, is pleading with the club’s bosses to reduce the punishment.

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A grandmother who stopped breathing for 25 minutes after suffering a heart attack “came back to life” to find that relatives had already cut off locks of her hair.

Family members had said their goodbyes after she suffered a large cardiac arrest and had even snipped off locks of her hair as mementoes.
Doctors at Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, Essex, marked he r4.5 out of 5 on the brain damage scale and warned relatives they expected her to die.
But now, after a miraculous recovery, she is able to talk, eat, walk and shower, and her family hopes she will be able to return home next weekend, after her life was saved by doctors and paramedics.

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More than 20 per cent of grandparents over 60 has a social media presence, an internet survey suggests – and most of those who do are on Facebook

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor

A fifth of all grandparents are on a social network, a new online survey suggests. Asked “Do you have an active account on any social networking websites?”, 22 per cent of grandparents over 60 answered yes.
Of those, 71 per cent said they were on Facebook, compared to 34 per cent on Twitter and 9 per cent on business network LinkedIn.
The website myvouchercodes.co.uk asked visitors to its site to answer the question and collected results from 1,341 grandparents as part of research into how the over 60s around the UK use the internet.

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The pioneering writer Arabella Boxer is a great British food legend whose books influenced a generation. Now her deli-owning son Charlie is the toast of london while her grandchildren Jackson and Frank carry the ame for the class of 2011. Together they explain how one family came to change the way we eat and drink today

By Lisa Markwell

Perhaps it was when Jackson Boxer wrote his first cookbook that the family realised just how much food had influenced their lives. He was, after all, just six. A little later, his younger brother Frank surprised his grandma, on an outing to the Criterion restaurant, by requesting a lamb shank. He was eight.

“Jackson’s book was all recipes he’d made up,” laughs his father Charlie. “I can only remember one: it was called ‘Half a Strawberry’, but it involved a leaf and there was a lot about the presentation.”

Perhaps all this is less surprising when one reconsiders the surname. Arabella Boxer, Jackson and Frank’s grandmother, is a legendary figure in the British food world, her 12 books well-thumbed and joyously splattered fixtures on all the best kitchen shelves. Now in her seventies, she is most famous for her innovative and handsome work First Slice Your Cookbook, a collector’s item these days.

Source: INDEPENDENT

Children’s gear left in cars overnight offers rich pickings

By Jo Thornhill

Parents and grandparents are being warned not to leave expensive baby equipment in their cars overnight because of the risk of theft.

As the cost of pushchairs, car seats and cots has soared, thieves are increasingly targeting such items. And they are apparently easy pickings. The ‘top five’ items left in cars overnightare pushchairs, toys, books, coats and travel cots, according to insurer Allianz.

Its research found that some parents regularly leave baby gear worth up to £500 unattended in their vehicles.

Source: DAILYMAIL

The real victim of the Miliband feud is their mother Marion

By Andrew Pierce and Geoffrey Levy

Every so often a dominant politician, usually with late-night drink in hand, will admit guiltily that the price of power has been the sacrifice of close family life.

For Ed Miliband, who snatched the leadership of the Labour Party from the expectant arms of elder brother David, that sacrifice has taken a deeply poignant turn.

For it is not so much his own family life with his wife and young children that has been sacrificed since his dramatic victory last September, as that of his widowed mother Marion, who is 76 and lives alone.

Nothing matters more to Marion Miliband, widow of Marxist academic Ralph, than ‘the family’. One would hardly expect anything else from a Jewish woman, born in Poland, whose own parents and grandparents were brutally murdered by the Nazis.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Research has led to calls for changes in government policy and a remodelling of provision to help this vulnerable group

By Amelia Hill

Services need to be reformed to adapt to a new demographic of thirtysomething grandparents often enduring poverty and deprivation in Britain’s most blighted communities, experts warn.

Authoritative research, to be launched in Westminster on Monday, has led to calls for changes in government policy and a remodelling of social service provision to help this hidden but growing group of vulnerable young people.

The project, Timescapes: Changing Lives and Times, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found charities working with impoverished communities are adapting their services to support those in their mid-30s who are forced to take on the role as parents to two younger generations while often caring for elderly parents at the same time.

Source: GUARDIAN

The family of a girl taken into care have not seen or heard from her for 10 months, writes Christopher Booker.

The social workers of Haringey are notorious for having failed to prevent the deaths of Baby P and Victoria Climbié. But in their zeal to avoid any repetition of these tragedies, they are now at the forefront of those councils which have pushed the number of children taken into care to an all-time high. In all the cases I have been following where children have been taken from their families for what seem like dubious reasons, no single instance has been more disturbing than the plight of a 10-year-old girl seized by Haringey last year, who seems in the past 10 months to have vanished off the radar.

“Girl X”, as I shall call her, was taken into care on the basis of three allegations. One turned out to be so laughably erroneous that it was soon dropped; a second was likewise dropped when medical tests completely disproved the council’ s claims. The third, highly questionable, has still not been put to any evidential test.

The last time Girl X was seen by her mother was at a supervised contact session last August. Having complained of sexual abuse by her foster carer’s 19-year-old son, she asked to be given, as a birthday present, a journal with a lock in which she could record her “secret thoughts”. Since that day she has not been seen by her parents or, since the autumn, by her siblings, who are also in care. It seems she has since been interviewed by three people – an independent social worker, an independent psychiatrist and her guardian, all of whom reported that she wished to see and be reunited with her mother.

No one representing the family has been allowed to see her, including the girl’s grandparents, who came from abroad specifically to visit her. Her parents have been forbidden to telephone her or even send a Christmas card. Her whereabouts are a mystery. When I put questions about her to Haringey last year, the council’s only response was to ask for a court order forbidding me to refer to the case at all. (It was not granted.)

Source: TELEGRAPH

Firefighters and detectives are working to establish what caused a caravan fire that killed two men and left a little girl seriously injured.

The blaze broke out at Sunny Sands caravan park in North Wales where the family were regulars just before 1.45am on Saturday. It is believed the fire started accidentally in the awning of the foursome’s touring caravan before engulfing it.

A 58-year-old man and his 26-year-old son were confirmed dead the scene at Talybont, near Barmouth, Gwynedd.

The older man’s 50-year-old wife and their two-year-old granddaughter were rescued from the fire by fellow holidaymakers who sprang into action before firefighters arrived. The injured duo were airlifted to Ysbyty Gwynedd Hospital.

But the little girl, who suffered severe burns, was transferred to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool where she is fighting for her life. Her grandmother sustained superficial burns to her forearm, police said.

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The author of The Tiger’s Wife is, at 25, the youngest person ever to win the prestigious literary award. So why does she have such mixed feelings about the honour?

BY Kira Cochrane

For the first seven years of her life, growing up in Belgrade, Téa Obreht was steeped in superstition and storytelling. She lived with her mother and maternal grandparents, and she gradually learned the basics: that you should never make a gift of an empty wallet, you should always give money to a homeless person before heading off on a journey, that the scissors her grandmother placed beneath the bed were intended to ward off evil. “I learned that if you cross a threshold to go on a journey,” she says, “even just to buy flowers down the street, you are not allowed to turn around and cross again until the journey’s done – so if you forget your money, you’re crap out of luck! You can be like, ‘Please give me the money,’” she waves her arms wildly over an invisible threshold, “but my grandmother would physically hold me back.”

Source: GUARDIAN

Gary Barlow, the Take That singer, suggests that his eight-year-old daughter auditions to become one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

By Richard Eden

Gary Barlow, the new head judge on The X Factor, was booed at an audition in Birmingham when he asked a female contestant whether she was a man. Happily, the Take That singer’s daughter Emily was treated more kindly when she took part in her own talent contest.

Mandrake hears that the eight-year-old competed in the auditions for a role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit West End musical The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium last week.

“She wants to be a Munchkin,” says my man on the yellow brick road. “She came with her grandmother.”

Source: TELEGRAPH

After receiving a standing ovation from the judges, seven-year-old pianist Curtis Elton believed he had sailed into the next round of Britain’s Got Talent.

By Louise Eccles, Simon Cable and Liz Thomas
Last updated at 1:21 PM on 4th June 2011

But two days before he was due to travel to London – with his £200 custom-made tux already packed – he was told he had not made the cut.

Footage of his grandmother wiping away a tear at his performance was then used to accompany film of a different child’s act. This is the cold-blooded reality for hundreds of contestants who, despite being given a unanimous three ‘yes’ votes from the celebrity judges in the first round, are quietly culled later in favour of ‘eye-popping’ performers and dancing dogs.

Source: DAILYMAIL

The Welsh words Nain and Taid have been listed in a top 10 of “unusual” names for grandparents.

31 May 2011 Last updated at 17:29 GMT

They are very common in north Wales, with Mamgu and Tadcu the south Wales alternatives.

A survey by gurgle.com, a website for new parents, put Nain fourth for grans, and Taid seventh in the male list.

But while the survey claims Nain and Taid are unusual, these Welsh words for grandmother and grandfather are used in much of Wales.

The survey of 1,000 British mothers found that 28% of children have five or more “grandparents”.

While the majority of those surveyed used traditional names like Nanny, Grandma and Grandad, the survey claims 3% used “alternative” names.

Source: BBC NEWS

Parents encourage creative alternatives including ‘GaGa’ and ‘Grampy’

By Lydia Warren
Last updated at 7:26 AM on 31st May 2011

Actress Goldie Hawn goes by ‘Gogo’, while cosmetically-enhanced comedienne Joan Rivers is ‘Nana New Face’.But celebrities are not the only ones veering away from the traditional ‘Grandma’ or ‘Grandpa’, a survey has found.
Parents are increasingly encouraging their children to adopt creative choices, including ‘Biddy’, ‘GaGa’, ‘Grampy’ and ‘Grumpy’.

Source: DAILYMAIL

The grandmother of Baby P has said social services boss Sharon Shoesmith should hand over the £2.5million she hopes to get in compensation for her sacking to a children’s charity.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:32 AM on 30th May 2011

The former £133,000-a-year director of Haringey Children’s Services could be in line for a payout which could top £2million after the Appeal Court ruled that her dismissal by former Labour education secretary Ed Balls was ‘procedurally unfair’ because she was not allowed the chance to defend herself.This was despite a damning report in 2008 which found that her department at the north London council had allowed toddler Peter Connelly to die with more than 50 injuries.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Time was you’d look to your grandparents for your newborn child’s first name, or perhaps the monarch. George, Margaret, something respectable, with a crease to it.

By Mike Higgins

Time was you’d look to your grandparents for your newborn child’s first name, or perhaps the monarch. George, Margaret, something respectable, with a crease to it. And then get back to the Home Service and the suet. But today? Well what you call your child will say as much about you and your – horrid word! – aspirations as the car in your driveway and those lumps from Ikea cluttering up your sitting-room: Kai, Jayden and Madison were all fast risers in the Office of National Statistics’ last list of most popular baby names in England and Wales (2009), and where do they come from?

At the top of these lists there are few surprises: Olivia, Chloe, Emily; Oliver, Jack, Joshua. But let me guess: you want quirky but not mad; evocative but not archaic; surprising but not isn’t-next-door’s-dog-called-that? Yet every sweet name you can think of has been used by recent arrivals among your friends and family (and God knows even if you all wear the same brands and use the same phones, you draw the line at bringing yet another Stanley into the world). Still, you have your shortlist which you keep to you and your partner.

Source: INDEPENDENT

Feeding on demand can help PREVENT obesity

Last updated at 2:27 AM on 28th May 2011

Modern mothers who shun traditional routine and feed their babies on demand could be helping to prevent obesity in later life. Research suggests that giving newborns food whenever they want could keep their appetite and weight in check as they grow up. By contrast, the established way, beloved of grandmothers, of a strict schedule in which babies are fed only every four hours, may be fuelling the obesity epidemic.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Teenage rappers The Right Path left in tears after heartfelt tribute to their grandfathers

By Sarah Bull
Last updated at 9:37 PM on 21st May 2011

Teenage rappers The Right Path were the stars of the night on Britain’s Got Talent tonight, with their heartfelt rap about their grandads. The duo, consisting of Jamie, 14, and George, 13, received all round top marks and were left in tears after they got a standing ovation from the audience. Before taking to the stage for their audition, the boys admitted they were nervous about the performance but excited about performing together for the first time.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Grandmother Hilda, 96, sets up kissing booth at fair (and she’s only charging 50p a time)

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:35 PM on 21st May 2011

Visitors to a community fair will get more than they bargained for when they are invited to pucker up at the kissing booth.For they will be pressing their lips with 96-year-old Hilda Boyce. Hilda, who will be making her way to the booth with her walking frame, came up with the idea for the ‘smooch-a-thon’ as a way to raise money for her local social club at a summer fair.

Source: DAILYMAIL

This is the first picture of a four-year-old boy who was knocked down and killed by a school bus.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:09 PM on 19th May 2011

Tragic reception pupil Alfie Jones was mown down by a coach carrying pupils from a nearby academy as he walked home from school with one of his parents. He was airlifted to hospital with serious injuries but later declared dead. The bus driver, a 28-year-old man, has been arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving and released on bail. Alfie’s grandparents left a card at the scene that read: ‘My beautiful, perfect grandson Alfie. Will never forget you and the joy you brought to our lives. ‘Sleep tight my angel. Love you always, Nanny H and Granddad XXX.’

Source: DAILYMAIL

Throw a lifeline to six million children: Ministers must allow parents to reinvest £2bn trapped in child trust funds

By Tony Hazell And James Coney

17th May 2011

Money Mail today calls on the Government to rescue the savings of almost six million children.

Some parents and grandparents have contributed thousands of pounds to child trust funds (CTFs) on the back of promises from the previous Government that they would prove ideal long-term investments for their child.

But the new Coalition decided last year the £250 paid to every newborn was an expense the country could no longer afford. Payments ceased at the start of the year and the Government will, in November, launch a Junior Isa — which will not have a State contribution.

Those with a child trust fund — all children born between September 1, 2002, and January 2, 2011 — will not be entitled to have a Junior Isa.

Now investment experts fear that the £2 billion still in these funds could be condemned to years of poor returns.

If they are no longer trying to attract new customers, investment firms will have little incentive to put their best managers in charge, while banks and building societies are likely to pay derisory interest rates.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Vicki and Octavia, our mother and daughter agony aunts, answer your questions

7:00AM BST 15 May 2011

I live in France and my only grandchild – aged six months – lives in England with my youngest son and his wife. My daughter-in-law’s mother, despite living in Ireland, has taken over all granny duties – going to stay with them every month and acting as a nanny. I make regular trips over, but still feel largely excluded. How can I be more involved?

VICKI You must resist this excluded feeling, otherwise it will fester into a feud. There is little you can do about the (seemingly) immediate bond between maternal grandmother and first grandchild from her daughter. But he is only six months old, and the bliss of grandchildren is when they’re two and babbling. You have a house in France, which is a serious weapon. Long summers, warm Easters, doting baby-sitters… No young couple with a child could resist staying with French Granny. If I were you, I’d invite Irish Granny and bond like crazy.

Source: TELEGRAPH

Ian Sansom on the original average, all-American TV family

By Ian Sansom

The Barlows. The Cartwrights. The Cranes. The Ewings. The Huxtables. The Partridges. The Royles. The Trotters. The Brady Bunch. Dynasty. Little House on the Prairie. Roseanne. There are as many kinds of TV family as there are families in reality, including the clan who bid each other a cheery goodnight as they switch off the lights at night – you know who I’m talking about.

In 1961, Earl Hamner, a writer in his 30s, from Schuyler, Virginia, published his second novel, Spencer’s Mountain. The family story he told in the book, he later admitted, was basically about “my brothers and sisters, my mother and father, my grandparents, as we were during the Depression years of the 30s”. It’s a kind of upbeat Angela’s Ashes. The novel was made into a film in 1963, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara, and then developed into a TV series.

Source: GUARDIAN

Grandmother celebrates 80th birthday wearing dress that granddaughter wore to prom

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:30 AM on 13th May 2011

When Margaret Morris wanted a special dress to wear for her 80th birthday party, she didn’t have far to look. Unbelievably, despite there being a 63-year age gap between them, she was exactly the same size as her 17-year-old granddaughter. Mrs Morris had bought Leanne Watts a dress just a few months before to wear for her first school prom.

Source: DAILYMAIL

Well, silly me. For a moment back there, I thought I might be in with a chance of some fun, some support — at the very least, some camaraderie. When I read of the launch of a website called Gransnet, the very name suggested it should have been right up my street.

By Carol Sarler
Last updated at 10:16 AM on 12th May 2011

True, I’m no fan of its effortlessly smug sister site, Mumsnet. But I am an out-and-proud grandmother to 18-month-old Milly. She is — by far — my number one interest in life, and I am distantly aware that not all my friends, for some strange reason, are equally fascinated. So Gransnet, I imagined, might be just the ticket. Somewhere to go, just to share the excitement. Other grandmothers to meet, just as doolally as me. Most of all, like-minded people, consumed with curiosity about the burning issues of these, our later years.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Queen goes riding with Edward’s children

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:43 PM on 11th May 2011

Smiling broadly and looking every inch the proud grandmother, this is the Queen as few have seen her before. The touching family snapshot shows the 85-year-old monarch belying her years as she looks relaxed on a pony ride with Lady Louise Windsor, seven, and her three-year-old brother James, Viscount Severn. Their parents, Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, have always fiercely protected their children’s privacy, particularly as Lady Louise – a bridesmaid at the royal wedding – suffers a rare eye condition which gives her a squint.

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When couples are torn apart by divorce or death, the link between children and their grandparents can be broken. Giulia Rhodes meets three women who endure the pain of not seeing their grandchildren

By Giulia Rhodes

An estimated one million grandparents in Britain are currently denied access to their grandchildren, usually as a result of family breakdown or bereavement. Now, the government is considering making access a legal right. The Family Justice Review, to be published this autumn, may come too late to rebuild many of those broken relationships, and its details are as yet unclear, but it is hoped that it will help to curb the number. Here two grandparents describe the pain of losing contact with their grandchildren, and a third explains how she eventually rebuilt her relationship with her granddaughters, with the help of the courts.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

A grandmother from Beijing has become China’s latest sensation after an energetic, Michael Jackson-inspired, dance routine on national television.

10:30AM BST 06 May 2011

Bai Shuying, 65, appeared on the first episode of the new season of China’s Got Talent, a hugely popular franchise of the British show. Last year, China’s Got Talent was won by Liu Wei, a 23 year-old with no arms, who gave a rendition of James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful, using his feet to play the piano.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

Thousands of young mothers and fathers still live with their extended family, a study has found.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 2:04 AM on 30th April 2011

One in 20 families under the age of 30 – couples with children and single parents – live with their parents or other family members. This equates to more than 100,000 young parents across the UK living this way. And as many as 35 per cent of the couples living with relatives are married, researchers believe. The study of 2,000 families, by insurance group Aviva, suggested financial pressures and the need for support and childcare may be behind the trend. There has been a 29 per cent increase in the number of multi-family households since 2001 –  up to 1,262,000 in 2010 – according to the Office for National Statistics.

Source: Dailymail>> Read full article and comment

President Obama’s father was a serial womaniser who had to be warned to stop his ‘playboy ways’.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:38 PM on 28th April 2011

• Obama raised by his grandparents and single mother
• Documents relating to his father paint a picture of a serial womaniser who officials were trying to force out of the country
  

With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate. Though the proof that he was actually born in Hawaii may silence some critics, a new, rather more interesting side of his life has emerged – that his father Barack Obama senior was a serial womaniser and polygamist who government and university officials were trying to force out of the country. Obama senior married Stanley Ann Dunham, a white student from Kansas, not only when he was said to have already been married to a woman in Kenya, but at a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the U.S.

Source: Dailymail>> Read full article and comment