Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at You

Kirsty Allsopp, the broadcaster, has taken drastic action. She admits to recently smashing her sons’ iPads against the kitchen table leg after they had persistently defied the limits she had set them for using the devices. It may have been a dramatic move, but she defended the action on Twitter: ‘I stood up to an...

Our online voice assistants can struggle to understand some of our stronger regional accents, it seems.  And so nearly four in five of us admit to changing the way we speak to ‘received pronunciation’ in order to make ourselves understood. Now a report from the Life Science Centre in Newcastle says that some people worry...

National Grandparents Day – 7th October  Now it is GOOD to pet your scared dog Take hoarding seriously Too tired to feel sociable? Danger ahead for our children Numbers of bags plummet Is it Joe or Jo? Amy or Aimee? Quilty pleasures What is happening to our attention span? Are you a club-sandwich pensioner? Why...

Parents may have to wait a few years to become grandparents, but it is definitely worth it.  Spending time with your grandchildren nourishes both your body and soul:  the physical energy you use to keep with them keeps you healthy, and your emotional bonds with them will reinforce your own emotional well-being. Grandparents can do...

As all dog owners know, this is the month that many fireworks begin.  What do you do if your dog begins to panic?  Well you should pet and comfort your dog, according to the latest advice from the Dogs Trust.  Help it to feel secure and reassure it when it turns to you. For years...

How much stuff do you have?  Do you find it really hard to throw things away?  You are not alone!  But the problem is so serious for some people that hoarding has now been classified as a medical disorder.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) says this could benefit thousands of people, because they will finally...

When you are over-tired, do you feel like having people around?  Most likely not.  And that is a big problem. For what doctors are calling the loneliness epidemic in the UK may well be fuelled by so many people’s trouble with getting enough sleep. A recent study at the University of California has found that...

Next time you are at the school gate, have a look at the children coming out.  How many are overweight?  Recent data from Public Health England (PHE) has found that one in ten children are classed as obese when they start primary school, and one in five of them is obese by the time they...

Congratulations! You are using many fewer plastic bags. On average, you now use about 19 a year – as opposed to 140 a year. The number of disposable carrier bags issued by the seven biggest supermarket chains has declined by 86 per cent since the charge was introduced in 2015, according to statistics from the...

How do you spell popular names for boys and girls?  This argument has rumbled on for years. Now a recent YouGov poll has asked the public, and some results point to a swing back to preferring more traditional spellings. Joe 87 per cent; Jo 4 per cent John 79pc; Jon 9pc Mark 78pc; Marc 9pc...

Quilting is making a big comeback, attracting people from all walks of life.  As one quilter explains: ‘In a fast-paced world where we live attached to screen, it’s refreshing to step away and focus on something like quilting.  It takes precision and focus, which can sometimes be just what’s needed to take yourself away from...

Social media and video games are harming our young people’s minds.  They are being so bombarded with instant gratification that, like young children, they need to have ‘something every moment to distract them.’ So says Baroness Greenfield, a senior research fellow at Oxford University.  She refers to studies at Harvard and Princeton which found that...