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3·26 Sept 2026·on Our preschooler eats anything we call 'rocket food'. My partner thinks it's lying

Coming to this late, after a night on call, so I'm sympathetic to the tired-parent argument. What worked for us was letting her name the food herself once she was old enough. She decided methi was 'dinosaur grass', and she was far more loyal to her own names than she ever was to ours.

6·22 Sept 2026·on Class 4 son had answers written on his palm in a class test. Teacher sent a note

That's worth knowing before you talk to him. Start with the nervousness, not the palm. If he feels you understand why he did it, he's more likely to tell you the truth about the rest.

3·13 Sept 2026·on Small playgroup now, AL-Falah School's nursery next June. Does a bigger class matter at 3?

Not about this school. What mattered more for my daughter in nursery was the number of adults in the room. Her class was big, but there was a teacher and two helpers, and nobody waited long for anything. Ask about adults per class, not just children.

6·9 Sept 2026·on 15 year old wants to go to Khairatabad with friends on a weekday evening

Find out what 'everyone' means. In my experience it is usually two families, and one of them has said 'we'll see'. A quick call to one parent tends to settle it. If you want to say yes in some form, a weekend morning is a different crowd altogether.

1·9 Sept 2026·on Son has one offer from campus placements and wants to wait for a better company

I can only speak from my nephew's experience. He took the first offer, a services company, and moved after eighteen months to the kind of company your son is hoping for. He says the first job taught him how offices work more than anything technical. It wasn't a wasted year and a half.

1·9 Aug 2026·on What should I check before my 13 year old joins an outdoor climbing group?

That's useful, thank you. I'm on call tonight and went back to the message her friend forwarded. They do want four indoor sessions first, at their own wall, before any outdoor day. So that's where we'll start. I'll ask about the rain rule and the ratio at the first session.

4·15 Jul 2026·on My toddler lectures her soft toys with one finger raised. I teach for a living.

On call, and this is the best thing I've read tonight. Mine did a stethoscope version at that age, listening to every chest in the house with a spoon.

3·11 Jul 2026·on My 14 year old asks if there's any point learning to code now. I write software for a living and had no good answer

Medicine had the same argument about imaging software. The doctors who understood how it worked were the ones who caught its mistakes. I'd tell him the same thing.

2·5 Jul 2026·on Signed up to speak at my daughter's class 8 career morning. She has asked me not to mention blood

Leaving her out of it entirely is the part I needed to hear. I'd half planned a story about her as a toddler with my stethoscope. That's gone. The hour-by-hour plan she can see the night before.

1·28 Jun 2026·on Weekend programme that changes the sport every month. Does anything stick at that age?

At that age I'd look less at which sports and more at who runs it. My daughter went through three activities before she was nine, and the one that lasted had a coach who knew every child's name by the second week and changed the drill the moment they got bored. Ask whether the same coaches stay across the months or a new one comes with each sport. In our experience that decided things far more than the format.

1·24 Jun 2026·on 15 yr old has started going for long walks alone after dinner. says he's 'thinking'

Similar with our daughter, on the society walking track, usually with one friend. I asked for a rough route and a time to be back, nothing more. She tells me more on the nights I don't ask.

1·19 Jun 2026·on Daughter chose a machine learning topic for her IB extended essay. That's my job.

Questions are the right line. When younger relatives ask me to 'check' a biology essay, I ask them to read a paragraph aloud and tell me what it means. Most of the time they find the problem themselves before I say a word.

1·10 Jun 2026·on son asked me to look at his resume. then ignored every comment

I review CVs for junior doctors at work and get the same response there, politely. The comments that stick are usually the ones they ask about again six months later, when something didn't work out. He kept your hour; it just isn't showing yet.

0·19 May 2026·on Pulled elbow from the 'one two three, swing' game. How do I stop the relatives without a scene?

Under the arms is what I ended up teaching my in-laws as well. Show them rather than tell them. One demonstration at the next function and they copied it, mostly because they thought it was their own idea.

0·14 May 2026·on A colleague keeps saying 'IGCSE from nursery' about Sancta Maria in Lingampally. What does that mean for a 3 year old?

Same answer from another side: at nursery, the board label means very little. With a baby that young I'd look at the commute and how long the school runs, since you could be doing that drive for fourteen years. Several colleagues' children did IGCSE and then moved to CBSE or IB for 11 and 12. It went fine, but they started planning it around class 8.

3·9 May 2026·on Do schools like St. Andrews in Sainikpuri let outside kids join their summer coaching?

If he's bored and 12, check whether the coaching is mornings only. Evening sessions in May are brutal. My daughter came back from one with a headache every day until we moved her to the 6.30 am batch.

2·5 May 2026·on Daughter wants to move to a 'dummy' school for class 12 to focus on coaching

Not yet for us, my daughter is younger. But two of my colleagues' children did this. One loved it. The other was lonely by October and missed the school events far more than she had expected. The difference seemed to be whether the coaching centre had a real peer group or only rows of strangers.