Letters From the Land of Nod — nod london RSS

As a father of a girl and a boy I am always fascinated by the nature/nurture question-particularly around what traits might fit typical gender roles and how much we influence it. Being a retired metrosexual myself, I am less inclined to willingly push too much of a bias- however let's be clear I am not raising my kids gender neutral.  Perhaps the most emotive topic is that around clothing/colour. At what age does our bias lead to the pattern of a stereotype? Certainly babies under a year old cannot communicate their preference for pink or for patterns, but does that influence what they like in later years?  I am not going to pretend I am a child pyschologist so I...

As with many men who move ungraciously from idle youth to middle age, there is a yearning to go back to the days when I could just do nothing. I am speaking of the same 'nothing' that Christopher Robin and Pooh chat about, when you say you're going to do nothing, then you do it. Unfortunately, work, kids and life get in the way of doing this.  My most memorable 'nothings' continued went later into life than most, but that's another story. Most often they consisted of laying out on a comfortable sofa and nursing either a hangover or a beer whilst watching sport. I particularly remember a time in University when this got so bad for me and my flatmate that we...

Firstly allow me to predict that this is the first children's blog to feature a Korean dictator on its preliminary post... As a history major and an ardent reader, I have studied a lot of dictators in my 45 years. Amongst the truly infamous of the who's who of this lot (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc) there are some clear personal patterns and traits which should be self evident to the studied man. It is for this reason that I am so surprised to find myself under a form of martial law in my own home at the hands of a tyrant of my own making. The dictator in question? My 2 (not 2 and half) year old daughter, Marla. To get a sense of...