Why my seven-year-old has a YouTube channel

Stampy: hero for the YouTube generation

Remember those heady childhood days of the 80s and 90s? When a group of grubby adolescents yelled at us to “Switch Off Our Television Sets And Do Something Less Boring Instead”? Or when Philip Schofield had Gordon the Gopher as an assistant presenter instead of Holly Willoughby? It’s difficult to forget when Ant and Dec were the heroes of our Saturday mornings not our Saturday nights and everyone wanted their pictures to be included in Tony Hart’s gallery.

If your children have passed the CBeebies stage you’d be hard pressed to identify a TV star that sums up their generation. In our household it is a more home-grown type of celebrity that is making its mark on a very different kind of childhood. All hail the rise of the YouTuber. Stampy. Chris MD. Dan TDM. Spencer FC. These are the people weaving their way into our family life.

Given the firm impression these YouTubers have been making, it was only a matter of time before Toby wanted to imitate them with his own channel. A devoted gamer, he’s been picking up tricks of the trade from these guys since a stupidly young age and wants to now share his knowledge with an audience. The benefits and the risks of the internet age is that we can all be publishers now – even a seven-year-old boy with dreams.

Best bank holiday day trips for a seven year old

That Friday night glass of wine tastes all the sweeter knowing there is an extra day in the weekend thanks to that old British tradition of the bank holiday. These little beauties have a tendency to pop up just at the right time, when the school run is becoming just a little too repetitive, and the email inbox is wearing you down. I appreciate that not everyone has the chance to participate in bank holiday glory but for those who do, it’s an opportunity to really make the most of the time off.

Save the housework for Sunday, and use the holiday as an excuse to get away from screens, the home and the unfinished chores tormenting you and go somewhere with your offspring. And if, like me, you have a seven-year-old to keep happy, here are some of my tips for days out that won’t disappoint the most demanding.

What I learned this Easter weekend

Sometimes a bank holiday weekend is the perfect tonic for taking stock of all that is good in your life and carving out some quality family time. With Good Friday and Easter Monday, creating cause to pause from the daily grind this year, I was determined to make sure we weren’t going to fritter this precious time on Minecraft marathons and chocolate-eating fests so instead made sure we had some plans to get out and about and explore.

It’s been lovely spending time together and it’s also been an opportunity to remind myself of a few things I’ve come to learn about family life. Here’s what I learned this Easter weekend.

Diary of a Minecraft prisoner

8:00am

You wake up elated because it is Sunday and you’ve given yourself an extra 90 minutes sleep. Result. The house is still so you get up to enjoy some peace and the freedom to catch a bit of BBC news before the TV is no longer under your control.

8:15am

You’re sitting comfortably on the sofa with a cup of tea and a slice of toast. You’re flicking channels because it’s not BBC news that’s on but Match of the Day. The sunshine is peeking through the curtains and you’re full of optimism. The living room door opens and the peace is disturbed but you’re happy to see his cute little smiling face and then those immortal words are uttered:

“Mummy can I play Minecraft?”

10 things the Mother’s Day cards don’t acknowledge

It’s lovely that motherhood has a day to celebrate it but Hallmark platitudes don’t always get to the heart of what it is to actually be a mother.

Here’s my list of things that the chocolates and the flowers and the three shelves of pink merchandise at Tesco sometimes fail to recognise:

Ice skating: the ultimate parenting challenge

After several days spent indoors assembling new Christmas presents, clearing out space for new Christmas presents and squashing down the cardboard packaging of new Christmas presents it was time to make a break for it.

We left the house.

Better than that, we did something active and something festive. We went ice skating at an open-air ice rink. It’s the sort of pursuit that looks so effortlessly romantic in the movies, and Toby certainly looked the part emerging from his bedroom dressed in a Christmas jumper, gilet and Russian hunting hat.

I did have some reservations. I haven’t skated since I was about 14 and I don’t recall being particularly gifted at it. I hoped it would be a bit like riding a bike. I hoped we weren’t going to end up in A&E.

The birth of an independent reader

This evening in our house, a miracle took place. For approximately one hour the TV was switched off, nobody was playing the Xbox, and the Youtubers were mercifully silenced.(And it was nothing at all to do with the fact the wi-fi connection was down!)

Caught reading.

Instead, what was happening was that Toby was reading. Not for homework. Not to find out how to perform a football skill. And not because he’d been coerced into it by me. He was finishing a book he’d chosen to read because he was enjoying it.

The 10 everyday acts that make us all parenting heroes

You’ve got to hand it to brand Beckham. This is a family that has successfully reinvented itself from 1990s tabloid fodder to Britain’s most famous celebrity export to bona fide national treasures.

Now David Beckham has given up football he seems to be publicly embracing his role of dad of four, which of course is lovely to see. Male parenting role models are always welcome.

However, let’s get a bit of perspective, people. Any time Becks is pictured in the same room as one of his offspring it seems to invite floods of gushing praise celebrating his wonderful fathering ability.

Why we don’t go to the theatre (and why we probably should)

Philip Pullman is arguably one of our generation’s best living authors and an all-round wise, sensible guy so I felt a twinge of shame when he recently decried that not enough children were going to the theatre.

His concerns were directed at schools which were prioritising league table performance and results over class outings to experience the arts first hand.

The facts back him up. According to Department for Culture, Media and Sport, in 2008-09 the proportion of primary school-age children who had visited the theatre in past 12 months was almost half (47.1%) but six years later, in 2014-15, this figure has fallen to less than a third (32.3%).

As a parent of a primary school-age child I have to hold my hands up. We haven’t been to the theatre for about two years.

Whatever happened to that Friday Feeling?

You’ve made it. Congratulations it’s the end of the week, and you’ve survived another five-day stint of seemingly relentless commuting, clock-watching, meetings, emails, pointless interruptions, impossible deadlines, and nit-picking colleagues.

You should be jumping for joy. You should be joining in with the gossiping colleagues. Or sweeping out the door at 4:59pm to head for the nearest pub.

Cocktails. Happy Hours. Pints in plastic cups on the pavement. Bar snacks. Dancing in office clothes at 4am. They all belong to someone else’s Friday Feeling because for you those days are long gone. Repeat. Long gone.

You are approaching middle age and have a child.