Oh dear, I recently read that there are all sorts of increased health risks for children of older fathers. The title may be overplaying it but there is definitely enough material here to make me look more closely at my child.
The article I read in Psychology Today written by Paul Raeburn, who has written extensively on the effects of older fathers on their children, asserts that there are lots of areas to be concerned about.
Allegedly research shows that in a child of a father over 40 there is a sixfold increase in the chance of autism while that increases to ninefold for fathers over 50.
This 'Advanced Paternal Age' has links to all sorts of birth defects such as cleft lip and palate, water on the brain, dwarfism and miscarriage. Now we can add another to the list which includes higher instance in prostrate cancer in boys of older fathers, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. That's 'Decreased Intellectual Capacity'.
I am worried enough as it is when it comes to my own intelligence but to think that my older fathering has diminished my poor boy's chances of a decent IQ is actually quite hard to take. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that the child can 'catch up' later and fulfil its intellectual potential.
Presumably that catch up is as a result of the decreased period that the child is under the father's parentage as people as old as me will die earlier than younger parents. At last, an advantage of being older on top of an earlier inheritance.
In all seriousness, this is a concern. Particularly in the context of our search for a suitable first school for the might, it has now biased my thinking to giving our boy the best education we can afford.
Bang goes the concept of Early Retirement. Any retirement is looking a decreasingly likely option.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Thursday 19 May 2011
Monday 16 May 2011
School Time?
My son, Scott, is just 14 months old and it's fair to say that of the many things on his mind right now, school is not one of them. Frankly, until this weekend, it wasn't on mine either.
My wife had been hit by a case of 'Bad-Mother-itis' after someone had asked her if she had put Scott's name down for a school yet. Both of us looked at one another and frowned. He's only 14 months old for goodness sake. However, in a sharp lesson we found that many parents are putting their child's name down at a school almost as soon as he or she is born such is the competition for places at good schools these days.
So in the blind panic that knee jerk reactions can cause, we found ourselves attending the Open Day of the nearby Prep School, York House near Croxley Green. Actually, it's near nowhere as it is a school set in its own grounds and sports a long drive down to an old redbrick building with a clock tower that looks like the set of 'Tom Brown Schooldays'.
Why, when we have several other schools to see (most of which are not private), did we choose to look at the most expensive Prep School in Hertfordshire first (OK, I am guessing here but I reassure myself that if there is another more expensive then I will be shocked), I don't know?
First of all we were late. Then I felt under dressed in jeans and a jumper. I felt even my swanky car looked cheap. But when we crossed the threshold we were met by both Head and Deputy Head Master who both shook us warmly by the hand just hard enough to see if they could hear the coins jangle in my pocket and I was reminded that these places are not just schools, they are businesses. We passed the first test and were passed onto a well groomed Asian pupil called Hassan to show us around. I work with many young people who are intelligent and good at the their jobs but who lack some diction. This kid was just 13 and he had better elocution that most company executives.
Hassan had more badges on his blue blazer than an experienced Morris Dancer which were for every sport conceivable. As we looked around the fantastic buildings and Kindergarten, he casually asked me if I played cricket. First, the assumption that I still played rankled a little. Then when I smugly said I used to play for a local league team, he asked 'Which county'?
County!? I was a bit part player for Hemel Hempstead but was proud of my minor achievements. Thank God he didn't ask me about rugby. In reply to all this he pointed to a spotty young kid in the other room and said he played for Middlesex. I suddenly realised how pathetically inadequate my life had been.
I also realised, as I surveyed each superbly equipped classroom and spoke to every toothy teacher, that a young child could get no better start in their life educationally to spend as much as 10 years at this place.
This taught me two things: 1) We had made a tragic mistake by coming to see York House first. It now muddles our thinking and sets unrealistic expectations for any other school we see. I mean, I can't think that a Primary School in our area will not only not have its own swimming pool but it certainly will not be able to have Kayak lessons in there. The only upside was that Scott slept most of the tour and so I reason that what he didn't see, he won't miss. 2) If we were to send our as yet unborn child and Scott to such a school for all of 10 years then we will have paid as much in fees as our current mortgage. Yes, it's that much.
By quirk of fate, I went to a Prep School as my father worked mainly abroad on assignments for BP who then paid the lion share of fees for any UK schooling as mostly boarding was required. I went to Craig-y-Nos school in Uplands, Swansea which has since relocated to the Gower Peninsula and was recently attended by my nephew, Matthew. When I went there it was a converted townhouse and was run by a Headmaster with a stutter called Ernie Walters and its only sporting prowess was cricket. We won the Under 11 Swansea District Cup but I missed the Final at St Helens because I finished term early to visit my parents somewhere abroad. My point here, was that Prep schools have moved on.
The problem I have with York House, apart from the potential drain on income, is that Prep Schools are usually a pre-cursor to a full private education. I subsequently attended Christ College, Brecon which is a fantastic school if you like rugby but this was only because my parents were abroad so much of the time. Scott will hopefully have us close at hand and so I don't envisage a need for boarding school or private school for that matter.
The problem maybe catchment areas. I don't know enough about local secondary schools around us but I know that Watford Grammar has a superb reputation while Verulam in St Albans is the feeder school to my old rugby club, Old Verulamium - and that's good enough for me. But we are not in the catchment area for either and I can't see ourselves moving into St Albans and sacrificing the peace and quiet of our current location for the hubbub of the City Centre and no parking or garden. The dogs would never forgive me.
But then, there was the Science lesson. As we entered the Kindergarten to look around its excellent facilities, we saw a group of boys led by a balding teacher who was conducting a science lesson in the yard. He had a foot pump and an inverted pop bottle a third filled with water with a rubber hose its neck connecting it to the pump and a boy was taking his turn to hold it in place as air was pumped in. As the teacher told the pupils that pressure was building and the molecules were gaining more energy, that energy had to have somewhere to go. And he was right. The bottle left its launchpad via the thrust of the ejecting water being forced out by the pressurised air. The child underneath was soaked. That experiment alone could have sold the whole place a thousand times over.
Who would have thought that the thought of schools for a 14 month old who can't even talk yet let alone read would cause such panic and hysteria?
As one parent put it to me over the weekend, this is just the start.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
My wife had been hit by a case of 'Bad-Mother-itis' after someone had asked her if she had put Scott's name down for a school yet. Both of us looked at one another and frowned. He's only 14 months old for goodness sake. However, in a sharp lesson we found that many parents are putting their child's name down at a school almost as soon as he or she is born such is the competition for places at good schools these days.
So in the blind panic that knee jerk reactions can cause, we found ourselves attending the Open Day of the nearby Prep School, York House near Croxley Green. Actually, it's near nowhere as it is a school set in its own grounds and sports a long drive down to an old redbrick building with a clock tower that looks like the set of 'Tom Brown Schooldays'.
Why, when we have several other schools to see (most of which are not private), did we choose to look at the most expensive Prep School in Hertfordshire first (OK, I am guessing here but I reassure myself that if there is another more expensive then I will be shocked), I don't know?
First of all we were late. Then I felt under dressed in jeans and a jumper. I felt even my swanky car looked cheap. But when we crossed the threshold we were met by both Head and Deputy Head Master who both shook us warmly by the hand just hard enough to see if they could hear the coins jangle in my pocket and I was reminded that these places are not just schools, they are businesses. We passed the first test and were passed onto a well groomed Asian pupil called Hassan to show us around. I work with many young people who are intelligent and good at the their jobs but who lack some diction. This kid was just 13 and he had better elocution that most company executives.
Hassan had more badges on his blue blazer than an experienced Morris Dancer which were for every sport conceivable. As we looked around the fantastic buildings and Kindergarten, he casually asked me if I played cricket. First, the assumption that I still played rankled a little. Then when I smugly said I used to play for a local league team, he asked 'Which county'?
County!? I was a bit part player for Hemel Hempstead but was proud of my minor achievements. Thank God he didn't ask me about rugby. In reply to all this he pointed to a spotty young kid in the other room and said he played for Middlesex. I suddenly realised how pathetically inadequate my life had been.
I also realised, as I surveyed each superbly equipped classroom and spoke to every toothy teacher, that a young child could get no better start in their life educationally to spend as much as 10 years at this place.
This taught me two things: 1) We had made a tragic mistake by coming to see York House first. It now muddles our thinking and sets unrealistic expectations for any other school we see. I mean, I can't think that a Primary School in our area will not only not have its own swimming pool but it certainly will not be able to have Kayak lessons in there. The only upside was that Scott slept most of the tour and so I reason that what he didn't see, he won't miss. 2) If we were to send our as yet unborn child and Scott to such a school for all of 10 years then we will have paid as much in fees as our current mortgage. Yes, it's that much.
By quirk of fate, I went to a Prep School as my father worked mainly abroad on assignments for BP who then paid the lion share of fees for any UK schooling as mostly boarding was required. I went to Craig-y-Nos school in Uplands, Swansea which has since relocated to the Gower Peninsula and was recently attended by my nephew, Matthew. When I went there it was a converted townhouse and was run by a Headmaster with a stutter called Ernie Walters and its only sporting prowess was cricket. We won the Under 11 Swansea District Cup but I missed the Final at St Helens because I finished term early to visit my parents somewhere abroad. My point here, was that Prep schools have moved on.
The problem I have with York House, apart from the potential drain on income, is that Prep Schools are usually a pre-cursor to a full private education. I subsequently attended Christ College, Brecon which is a fantastic school if you like rugby but this was only because my parents were abroad so much of the time. Scott will hopefully have us close at hand and so I don't envisage a need for boarding school or private school for that matter.
The problem maybe catchment areas. I don't know enough about local secondary schools around us but I know that Watford Grammar has a superb reputation while Verulam in St Albans is the feeder school to my old rugby club, Old Verulamium - and that's good enough for me. But we are not in the catchment area for either and I can't see ourselves moving into St Albans and sacrificing the peace and quiet of our current location for the hubbub of the City Centre and no parking or garden. The dogs would never forgive me.
But then, there was the Science lesson. As we entered the Kindergarten to look around its excellent facilities, we saw a group of boys led by a balding teacher who was conducting a science lesson in the yard. He had a foot pump and an inverted pop bottle a third filled with water with a rubber hose its neck connecting it to the pump and a boy was taking his turn to hold it in place as air was pumped in. As the teacher told the pupils that pressure was building and the molecules were gaining more energy, that energy had to have somewhere to go. And he was right. The bottle left its launchpad via the thrust of the ejecting water being forced out by the pressurised air. The child underneath was soaked. That experiment alone could have sold the whole place a thousand times over.
Who would have thought that the thought of schools for a 14 month old who can't even talk yet let alone read would cause such panic and hysteria?
As one parent put it to me over the weekend, this is just the start.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Thursday 12 May 2011
The Sum of all Fears
Following on from some of my thoughts yesterday, what could be worse than losing a young child?
I may be thoughtless here but I heard on the radio today that the little girl that was caught in the cross fire of a London shooting a few weeks ago is said to be recovering but it is now confirmed that the bullet paralysed her and she will never walk again.
Hearing that moved me to tears as I drove the car. I can't think of anything worse than a child being maimed at such a young age and having to face the rest of their life in a wheelchair. The child's name is Thusha Kamaleswaran and she was shot in the chest in a shop in Stockwell in March.
In another radio snippet, there was a story about criminals and victims facing one another in order to get some kind of closure for the victim while the criminal can rightly feel remorse for the crime they committed. Admittedly this was related to burglary but the aim was to justify not sending the criminal to jail as most burglaries are committed by young people and therefore they might shape up without having to go to prison and mix with hardened criminals.
In principal, I don't disagree with the latter. But of the six people so far arrested for the attempted murder of Thusha, only one is not a teenager, and he's just 20. The rest are 17-19 and there is one suspect aged 14.
I am not sure of my point here. But if I were the parent of little Thusha I am sure that forgiving would be far from my mind and I tend to forgive most things easily.
There is an argument, however, for terrorists and murderers to have to confront the enormity of their actions. Bin Laden will never have to face up to that and in the minds of his followers he's up there with his gaggle of virgins right now, whooping it up. That's a victory to him and his cause. If only he could have stood and faced the loved ones of those who died in 9/11 and allowed them the opportunity to stare him in the eye or ask him where in all the Koran does it say that you murder innocent people to perform Jihad? Perhaps it would have given some semblance of closure but maybe, just maybe, Bin Laden himself might have seen how totally absurd his actions were.
I digress. The fact is that for no good reason, a small child aged just 5 has to now face the prospect of living all her life at the most extreme disadvantage.
I cannot even start to contemplate how I would feel if this little girl were my daughter. But I know how I feel about the people who shot her.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I may be thoughtless here but I heard on the radio today that the little girl that was caught in the cross fire of a London shooting a few weeks ago is said to be recovering but it is now confirmed that the bullet paralysed her and she will never walk again.
Hearing that moved me to tears as I drove the car. I can't think of anything worse than a child being maimed at such a young age and having to face the rest of their life in a wheelchair. The child's name is Thusha Kamaleswaran and she was shot in the chest in a shop in Stockwell in March.
In another radio snippet, there was a story about criminals and victims facing one another in order to get some kind of closure for the victim while the criminal can rightly feel remorse for the crime they committed. Admittedly this was related to burglary but the aim was to justify not sending the criminal to jail as most burglaries are committed by young people and therefore they might shape up without having to go to prison and mix with hardened criminals.
In principal, I don't disagree with the latter. But of the six people so far arrested for the attempted murder of Thusha, only one is not a teenager, and he's just 20. The rest are 17-19 and there is one suspect aged 14.
I am not sure of my point here. But if I were the parent of little Thusha I am sure that forgiving would be far from my mind and I tend to forgive most things easily.
There is an argument, however, for terrorists and murderers to have to confront the enormity of their actions. Bin Laden will never have to face up to that and in the minds of his followers he's up there with his gaggle of virgins right now, whooping it up. That's a victory to him and his cause. If only he could have stood and faced the loved ones of those who died in 9/11 and allowed them the opportunity to stare him in the eye or ask him where in all the Koran does it say that you murder innocent people to perform Jihad? Perhaps it would have given some semblance of closure but maybe, just maybe, Bin Laden himself might have seen how totally absurd his actions were.
I digress. The fact is that for no good reason, a small child aged just 5 has to now face the prospect of living all her life at the most extreme disadvantage.
I cannot even start to contemplate how I would feel if this little girl were my daughter. But I know how I feel about the people who shot her.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday 11 May 2011
In This Day and Age?
Did you know that each one of us in Britain is on average caught on CCTV at least 70 times a day? And did you know that as long ago as 2006 there was over 1 CCTV camera for every 14 people in Britain - well above the average for any developed country in the world?
Shocking to know in some respects. All the more shocking is that people still commit crimes despite the presence of so many cameras. Perhaps not very many of these cameras are actually looking for serious crime - many are looking for petty offenders like people over staying at a car park or for what we are putting in our bins (I kid you not).
Why do I mention this? Well, it is alleged in a village not far from us there has been two instances of a single grey car attempting to snatch a young child. In both instances the target was a young girl but from descriptions it appears to be the same car. If there are so many cameras about it is a wonder that these people try to commit such crimes, knowing that their number plate can not only be filmed but recognised too and matched against databases.
It sends a shudder down the spine of any parent, no matter what age. The overwhelming urge to protect a child and ensure it suffers no hardship at the hands of evil people comes to the fore at such times and it makes you wonder just what you would do if someone attempted to abduct your own child.
Topically, I see that a book by Kate McCann is available and is being serialised in one of the dailies. I have lost track as to when Kate and Gerry's daughter, Madeleine, was allegedly abducted in Portugal but again this brings back evocative memories of a very disturbing time - and it felt terrible even though we had yet to become parents.
But what was equally disturbing was the McCann's apparent demeanour and specifically the rather odd and indifferent behaviour by the mother, Kate. I read a very interesting Sunday Times article at the time written by a psychologist and it explained that the reason why so many people seemed to distrust her version of events on that fateful night as she and her husband revelled at a nearby restaurant was because she seemed so unmotherly, pristinely turned out and calm. More recently, the full series of questions that were put to her when she was designated as an 'arguedo' or suspect in Portugal, were published and she chose to answer only one of all the questions, most of which were really quite straightforward and pertinent to little Madeleine's disappearance. That the family refused to go back to Portugal to re-enact the events of the night was more perplexing as experience has shown such reconstructions often serve to jog memories and create new leads.
I suppose the primal fear for my child in me rages against any would-be wrong doer. I cannot fathom what it would be like to lose our wee one but I am certain that I would not be out at my usual restaurants or playing tennis for a long while after.
I used to be against all these security cameras but if they save just a few lives, they get my vote.
Just turn them away from petty crime and focus on real crimes.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Shocking to know in some respects. All the more shocking is that people still commit crimes despite the presence of so many cameras. Perhaps not very many of these cameras are actually looking for serious crime - many are looking for petty offenders like people over staying at a car park or for what we are putting in our bins (I kid you not).
Why do I mention this? Well, it is alleged in a village not far from us there has been two instances of a single grey car attempting to snatch a young child. In both instances the target was a young girl but from descriptions it appears to be the same car. If there are so many cameras about it is a wonder that these people try to commit such crimes, knowing that their number plate can not only be filmed but recognised too and matched against databases.
It sends a shudder down the spine of any parent, no matter what age. The overwhelming urge to protect a child and ensure it suffers no hardship at the hands of evil people comes to the fore at such times and it makes you wonder just what you would do if someone attempted to abduct your own child.
Topically, I see that a book by Kate McCann is available and is being serialised in one of the dailies. I have lost track as to when Kate and Gerry's daughter, Madeleine, was allegedly abducted in Portugal but again this brings back evocative memories of a very disturbing time - and it felt terrible even though we had yet to become parents.
But what was equally disturbing was the McCann's apparent demeanour and specifically the rather odd and indifferent behaviour by the mother, Kate. I read a very interesting Sunday Times article at the time written by a psychologist and it explained that the reason why so many people seemed to distrust her version of events on that fateful night as she and her husband revelled at a nearby restaurant was because she seemed so unmotherly, pristinely turned out and calm. More recently, the full series of questions that were put to her when she was designated as an 'arguedo' or suspect in Portugal, were published and she chose to answer only one of all the questions, most of which were really quite straightforward and pertinent to little Madeleine's disappearance. That the family refused to go back to Portugal to re-enact the events of the night was more perplexing as experience has shown such reconstructions often serve to jog memories and create new leads.
I suppose the primal fear for my child in me rages against any would-be wrong doer. I cannot fathom what it would be like to lose our wee one but I am certain that I would not be out at my usual restaurants or playing tennis for a long while after.
I used to be against all these security cameras but if they save just a few lives, they get my vote.
Just turn them away from petty crime and focus on real crimes.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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