Okay so I’m very good at giving practical, evidence driven, advice to the families that I work with and I’m a child development information fiend HOWEVER and I must admit that I don’t always practise what I preach.

It’s easy as parents in a social media rife era to constantly question (and put down) your parenting skills.

Whether it’s the TV; newspaper articles; links on Facebook or posts on Instagram we are bombarded with messages about how to raise our children and, don’t get me wrong, there are lots of reasons why we should limit screen time; put down our phones; ditch the dummy etc etc etc.

I know the theory; I know the current evidence base and I know what “best practise is” and if you see me in Wagamama’s with 3 children and a heavily pregnant wife sat next to a 20 month old with a dummy in his mouth and watching Blippi on my phone please don’t judge me. It’s clearly been a hard meal / hour / journey / previous night / day and Nia and I need our sanity to get through to (the kid’s) bed time!

This isn’t an advertisement for “Good Enough” parenting but I guess what I’m saying is it’s OK to let things slip every so often if that’s what you need to do. You’re doing a great job!