Cultured Views

Get those kids taught to swim!

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One thing I am very passionate about is the importance of having children taught to swim as early as possible. You can start them taking lessons in the water as early as eight weeks of age and one British Mum recently thanked the gods she did just that.

Her little girl, aged two, recently fell into the pool - the gate was left unlocked so Mum deserves a severe dressing down for that - but because the child had been having water lessons since she was eight weeks of age she was able to paddle to the side of the pool and hang on until Mum found her.

Children much older than this little girl have drowned in the same circumstances simply because they could not even dog paddle or tread water.  As an Australian I have read of too many tragedies where children drown in backyard pools, in the UK the problem is endemic and there is no excuse for it.

We teach our kids to talk, to walk, not to talk to strangers and hold a spoon - swimming is just as vital a survival instinct and one that is literally life saving.  Not having your child taught to swim, in my opinion, is criminal negligence - swimming lessons should be mandatory for all children.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Teaching your kids to read before they start school

Our youngest two are three and five and James, five, is starting big school later this year. One thing we really wanted to do was get them both reading in some form before they started school and address any issues in that area should they arise.

We have been using an excellent range of books for their age group from Usborne and I highly recommend them to other parents who want to encourage their youngsters to read. They are available in the UK and the US and the books are just beautiful. There’s a range of topics including historical stories and people so your kids will get a history lesson as well; some of them I even read myself!

The current catalogue is called Usborne Complete List 2008 and the books are very reasonably priced. We read two a week to our kids and they love them - and the results are certainly showing in that James and John should turn out to be avid readers later on. That’s a good thing in my opinion.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Never let a man order the meal!

My man and I have a rule set in concrete when we go out to dinner - I do the ordering. He is not a fussy eater as such but when faced with a list of elegantly printed meal descriptions he goes to pieces. This is a guy who has a collection of university degrees and diplomas as long as your arm; he has qualifications in science, mathematics, marketing and finance - plus is fluent in several languages - and yet to him a restaurant menu is one great unfathomable mystery.

So, I make the selections. This way we get a meal that we both know we can eat, but sometimes we girls like to be looked after, so recently when we went out to dinner I made him do the ordering for a change. I sat back and smiled while he stared at the menu as though it was one of my credit card statements.

Now remember, this guy has a degree in French, and here we were in a french restaurant. He knows what I like to eat and how repulsed I am by the french taste for eating internal organs or oversized, diseased goose livers (quaintly known as ‘foie gras’ but actually a feathered form of cirrhosis of the liver).

Even though university degree French does not seem to cover food descriptions he knows that if he orders poulet he will end up with chicken in some form - so that is what he went for. After much excessive perspiring he settled on a selection for me and assured me I would like it as it involved veau - and I do love veal.

What eventually arrived was something out of my worst nightmare.

He got his lovely poulet and was very proud of himself but as he was tucking in I could only sit in frozen horror and stare at my plate - a huge serving of rognons de veau - veal kidneys - and there seemed to be thousands of them! all over the plate!!

Accusations and denials followed.

Needless to say there was no way on this earth I could ever put one in my mouth so I spent the next half hour making discreet trips to the ladies room with a handful of the things wrapped in a napkin. They went straight down the loo - where they would have gone anyway had I swallowed them.  I decided not to punish him further - he had to pay for the meal I did not eat and to compensate myself I ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu. So there’s a lesson girls; should you ever meet a guy who claims to speak French make darn sure he knows what rognons are before you let him loose with a menu!

Popularity: 8% [?]