7 rules for chic, child-friendly decor
A veneer of microplastics lay waste to a handcrafted Moroccan rug. Baskets overflowing with construction vehicles in DayGlo hues obscure meticulously arranged shelves. Skyscrapers created from magnetic tiles tower over occasional side tables. Children and decor are like oil and water — only a pack of wolves could wreak more havoc with your interior design schemes.
The paraphernalia of childhood is, quite simply, not chic. Sure, you can start with pastel-shaded wooden toys and industrially designed playthings, but the primary-coloured polymers are, at some point, coming for you.
After seven years writing about my experiences with my children, I know far better than to tell any other person in service to the next generation what to do. However, if you are feeling that they have
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Times
5 hours ago
- Times
Jack Kinsey: Why I ripped out my new £15,000 kitchen
Decorator's remorse is a common affliction: many of us have fallen for a rug that looks comically small once in situ, or chosen a paint we wished we'd tested more thoroughly. But kitchen regret is a much costlier mistake to put right. The content creator Jack Kinsey admits he 'followed the norms' when putting a kitchen into his home four years ago. His once-derelict Edwardian chapel in the Norfolk countryside is anything but ordinary, yet the white Howdens units he chose — with a curved island and dark granite worktops — were the definition of it. 'It was just way too modern for the building and it didn't have any real warmth or personality to it,' Kinsey says. When the 29-year-old finished as a runner-up in the 2023 series of the BBC show Interior Design Masters, he returned home wanting to apply all that he had learnt to the space he shares with his partner, Alex. 'My creativity was really sculpted from being on the show and I wanted to embrace talking points around my home,' he says. • Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement Another driver for starting again was a wish to reinstate a fireplace that the couple had naively covered up when renovating. 'Being an old chapel, it gets really cold in winter, so we wanted to move the kitchen to another wall,' he explains. Kinsey dreamt of a handmade kitchen by DeVol, but quickly surmised that was out of his budget (the brand helpfully publishes costings alongside case studies on its website). So he turned to eBay and found a pair of handsome wardrobes and sideboards in solid reclaimed oak. 'We pushed it to be a bit more of a challenge than just buying a new kitchen,' he says. The oak set cost £3,500 — less than 10 per cent of what the DeVol cabinets might have set him back. To recoup the cost of new appliances, Kinsey advertised the Howdens suite — appliances included — for £2,000 on Facebook Marketplace. Within two days it had been snapped up. 'We photographed it really nicely. I always think if you're going to put something on Marketplace, make it stand out from everything else. I think everyone should be doing this — it's a really good way to upcycle and reuse,' he says. Of the dozen messages of interest Kinsey received, it was a couple renovating a rectory elsewhere in Norfolk who bagged themselves a bargain (Kinsey estimates the original kitchen to have cost about £15,000). He and his partner spent two days dismantling the units and shrink-wrapping them for protection, then delivered them to their new home. Surprisingly there were no casualties. 'They sent us a picture of it afterwards and it looked great,' he says. He sounds just as unfazed about installing his own second-hand treasure. Roping in his dad to help, they had to add 20cm of depth to the 40cm-deep units in order to accommodate appliances. Sawn-off bits of skirting board and coving were rejigged to make the units fit for purpose. The ovens are hidden behind a pair of louvered doors, which ingeniously help with ventilation; a second pair open to reveal a Mediterranean-inspired drinks station wrapped in Spanish tiles, and exuberant appliances from Dolce & Gabbana's collaboration with Smeg, including a set of mini fridges and gadgets, ranging from a toaster to a milk frother, totalling several thousands of pounds. Kinsey says it was a justified splurge: 'Because we'd saved a lot of money on the cost of the kitchen, I wanted to treat myself. When we open the doors, everyone always feels transported somewhere cool.' • What I wish I'd done differently renovating my kitchen For the worktops, Kinsey turned to Neolith. He was drawn to marble but put off by its fragility and porosity. By contrast, Neolith's sintered stone, 'is the best thing, because we can cut on it and put hot pans on it', he says. Wrapping the material up the sides of the tall cabinets disguises any gaps and joins. Granted, the drawers of his sideboards don't have the soft closures found in a modern kitchen, but Kinsey is thrilled with his new space. His advice to others needing to pivot on a budget is as follows: 'Try to think outside of the box — you can get some beautiful freestanding furniture and upcycle it into a kitchen. We were so desperate to do it all ourselves, but it'd be a lot easier if you got a joiner. It can save you so much money.'
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Eight books to get your eight-year-old excited about reading
The National Literacy Trust (NLT) has published the results of its largest survey of young people's book habits — and it does not make for happy reading. A mere 32 per cent of young people (aged 8-18) admitted to enjoying reading in 2025 (the figure in 2005 was 68 per cent). And only 18 per cent of them are reading daily in their free time, half the amount that were doing so 20 years ago. There are gender disparities too, with the sharpest drop-off recorded in boys aged 11-18. And children eligible for free school meals report lower levels of enjoyment than their peers. The NLT described the findings, based on a poll of 114,970 children, as 'deeply concerning'. I would add more adjectives to that. Utterly depressing — and completely unsurprising. It would be simplistic to blame all of this on tech but just as rates of childhood depression, anxiety and self-harm have dramatically worsened since the wide adoption of digital technology, so too has children's ability to concentrate. It's extremely difficult to persuade a child to sit down with a book when there is Netflix, YouTube and Disney+ within easy reach, to say nothing of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, or Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, Mario Kart World and the rest. The most powerful companies in the world have trained their finest minds on the destruction of our children's attention spans. • How to game safely with your kids, by a dad who started aged 4 Meanwhile, the remorseless drive to improve Britain's education metrics has severely damaged English as a subject. It's more about fronted adverbials and box-ticking comprehension exercises than it is about expression, ideas and creativity. It has put my 11-year-old right off — and I'm sure he's not the only one. Publishing has also played its part. There's a formulaic quality to the children's books I see arrayed in Waterstones, which seem to fall into the eat-your-greens category — lots of virtue signalling and moral didacticism — or rely on overfamiliar tropes of dragons and spells, which I'm sure only appeal to a minority of children. I'd love to see some books that meet children where they are now. As the parent of a reluctant 11-year-old reader who only wants to read manga, I believe the drop-off in engagement happens at about eight years old so that's where I've aimed my recommendations. Here are eight thoroughly enjoyable novels that prioritise fun. I've chosen books where the language is playful enough to entertain adult reading companions too, because no child wants a grown-up putting a dampener on their pleasure. • Children's books are getting shorter — here is the proof A laugh-out-loud story about a family secret, a Welsh adventure and an onion-eating competition with three boy protagonists and a guy called Big Trev. Freddie and his two best mates are on a mission that turns into a wild goose chase that lands them on the news in superhero costumes. There are brilliant Rob Biddulph illustrations that perfectly capture Freddie's doubts as he attempts to board a boat or mistakes his granny's knickers for a hanky. The wealth of visual gags makes it ideal for anyone trying to wean their child off David Walliams books — this is funnier and more imaginative. If you need to break out of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid cycle (nothing wrong with it, the latest is a hoot) this book by the polymath Richard Ayoade is similarly full of surreal wit and deadpan jokes, as well as silly pictures. It's a story about a talking book, and is narrated by the neglected book itself, which unloads all its grievances about bent spines and fickle readers who require fire-breathing dragons on the cover. My son was given it by his godmother to get him through my mother's funeral when he was eight years old. It worked a treat and he has since reread it many, many times. Bored Milo finds everything a waste of time: 'I can't see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February.' But then he receives a mysterious package containing 'one genuine turnpike tollbooth'. Next thing he knows, he's 'speeding along an unfamiliar country road' in a colourful new world. This daft masterpiece, adored by Maurice Sendak, has been described as a children's Ulysses. It seized my son's imagination so dramatically that I dream of discovering that Norton Juster turned it into an epic series (come on, Juster estate!). A gripping, inventive series of speculative fiction novels and novellas set in a dystopian Britain where society is segregated by race. In this imagined world, the dark-skinned Crosses are the ruling class while the light-skinned Noughts are like slaves. Against the odds the main characters — Sephy (a Cross) and Callum (a Nought) — fall in love across the divide, which leads them into danger. Often described as a dystopian Romeo and Juliet, it's chewy and funny with complex characters. I've yet to meet anyone, adult or child, who can't be won over by Mark Haddon's ingenious murder mystery about a 15-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome who is investigating the death of a dog. When Christopher from Swindon finds his neighbour's mutt, Wellington, with a garden fork through his chest, he doesn't expect to stumble upon a secret about his dead mother. Like his hero Sherlock Holmes, Christopher — a maths genius — is driven by logic rather than emotion. But what he discovers transforms his ideas about his life and his family, as well as his understanding of love. Haddon's very witty novel is so suspenseful that I heard my son gasp at the twist. This book, much cherished in our house, is so evocative of being a child. It's also written with a real ear for how children talk and think. Gene Kemp was a schoolteacher and clearly an amazing listener. It's about a daring and energetic 12-year-old, Tyke, who fights in class, steals watches, cheats and turns up sheep skeletons. Tyke subverts gender expectations. It was published in 1977 so is nostalgic for parents — but to our son the sheer freedom the children enjoyed back then was amazing. It also has an incredibly perspective-spinning twist at the end. A good one for boys to get their heads round. This dark allegory about Stalinist Russia is still shocking, funny and heart-rending 80 years after its publication. Set in a society where animals are much cleverer than in real life, the pigs start a revolution against their human farmer, Mr Jones. All the animals are supposed to be equal in this new system but the power-hungry pigs, particularly Napoleon and Snowball, quickly gain power and exploit it. My son was moved by the tragic fate of the hard-working horse, Boxer, betrayed by the ideals of Animalism. The first book in the mega-selling trilogy of dystopian novels is catnip for reluctant readers. It's fast-paced, intelligent and cleverly crafted, with plenty of suspense, mystery and romance. The heroine at the centre is the rebellious Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the poorest district of a post-apocalyptic land called Panem, which is supposed to be what's left of America. She finds herself competing in a televised battle royale, the Hunger Games, where teenagers from the 12 districts fight to the death. It paints a pretty bleak picture of a war-ravaged future but it will help children to understand totalitarianism, as well as propaganda.
Times
9 hours ago
- Times
What changed when I had a baby? Around the world in four mothers' stories
When the American journalist Abigail Leonard was six months pregnant, her husband was offered a job in Japan. Moving was 'the sensible choice' — what luck to be able to swap living in the US, one of the only countries in the world with no mandatory paid maternity leave, for Tokyo, where encouraging a baby boom is part of the government's economic policy. Leonard was thrilled at the prospect of what we take for granted in the UK, including free check-ups for babies. Soon, however, she realised that being pro-mother is not the same as being pro-woman. In Japan motherhood is synonymous with sacrifice — starting with birth, when women are seldom offered pain relief because of a belief that suffering creates a deeper bond with the baby. Leonard was asked what she did 'before becoming a mummy', while her husband carried on as normal with his career. Still, she had it a lot better than in the US, where an uncomplicated birth costs about $3,000 and paid maternity leave is rare. So Leonard, who is very much still a journalist as well as a 'mummy', decided to investigate which countries get it right. Four Mothers begins at the start of 2022 and follows four women, from the US, Japan, Kenya and Finland, through their first year of parenting. Japan and the US were chosen partly because of Leonard's own experiences; she picked Finland for its low maternal and infant mortality rates — and for frequently coming top of happy country studies — and Kenya because it has introduced policies to stop high maternal mortality rates. As Leonard says, 'parenthood is shaped by the systems our societies have built over time' and personal decisions, such as how much leave to take or even which parent shushes the baby back to sleep at 2am, are, in large part, determined by politics. It's particularly true at the moment, with Donald Trump suggesting $5,000 baby bonuses for American mothers and right-wingers in the UK urging women to do their bit to reverse our declining birth rate. Leonard is a masterly reporter. The four women share intimate details of their shifting post-baby lives, which read like gripping fiction. The American, Sarah, 33, is a teacher in Utah who grew up Mormon. She's married to Brian, an Amazon delivery driver who is also — this is a curveball — a polyamorous bisexual. Their relationship provides enough material for a book in itself. Sarah is remarkably generous towards Brian, making time for him to see his boyfriend while she cares for their newborn, ignoring 'a faint sense that she has her own needs'. Her husband's sexual preferences are the least of Sarah's worries, however. If you aren't well-off, motherhood in the US is punishing. When their baby, Vivian, struggles to breastfeed and doesn't put on weight (a common problem and one that we have free council-run breastfeeding clinics to help with in the UK), Sarah has no one to turn to, and misses the Mormon community. I felt for Sarah — even more so when, without maternity leave pay, she must rush back to work after three months and begin a punishing schedule of pumping milk for Vivian. According to Leonard it's Richard Nixon's fault. In his 1968 presidential campaign he promised to expand access to public childcare. But the conservative branch of his party revolted — Mormons worried that it would upend family structure while others called it communist, so in 1971 Nixon nixed it and childcare policy has been taboo since then. On top of that, Leonard argues that there is a vested interest in childcare not being state funded — private equity invests heavily in profit-making childcare companies and corporations want to use what paid leave they do offer to entice talented employees. Finland, no surprise, is a far better place to have a baby. Anna, 36, begins maternity leave a month before her due date and receives generous maternity pay. Until the 20th century most Finnish women gave birth in their home saunas (turned off, of course) but now just 0.2 per cent of births are at home, and 92 per cent of women receive some sort of pain relief during labour. They are also offered prenatal counselling to discuss their own childhoods. It's so good for women that attention has now shifted to how men can be better supported to look after their children. But Leonard is interested in what happens when things go awry in a feminist utopia. Anna's partner, Masa, who grew up in Japan with a single mother and no father figure, is more interested in which pram to buy than spending time with the baby, although when breastfeeding isn't working he accuses Anna of starving their child. Anna's reaction to their relationship breakdown is underpinned by her coming from a country with a strong history of women's rights — she doesn't want their son 'to learn that women are the ones who will take care of all the world's population when babies are born'. In Kenya, Chelsea, 23, gets pregnant after an affair with a married man from a different tribe because of a faulty morning-after pill. Many Kenyan women rely on this pill as there is stigma around other forms of contraception. Birth in Kenya has a lot in common with the US — both are countries with vast gaps between rich and poor, and if you can't afford a private birth it's brutal. Chelsea asks for an epidural and is told it costs US$300, which she can't afford. Only 2 per cent of Kenyan women get epidurals. Still, things have improved since the country made prenatal care free in 2013: the under-five mortality rate has since dropped from 50 to 39.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to Unicef. (In the States the figure is 6.5, while in the UK it's 4.5.) Like Sarah, Chelsea goes back to work after three months, but unlike Sarah she can't afford formula milk. Her story is the most painful to read — she is so alone, both her parents are dead and having a baby brings back that grief. • Why am I being judged for having a third child? In Japan, Tsukasa, 33, is also lonely. Japanese fathers haven't traditionally been involved with babies; only two thirds are present at the birth (it's 95 per cent across most of Europe) and her husband, although doting, works all hours. Bedsharing with the baby, which most Japanese parents do, means between 50 and 70 per cent of Japanese couples don't have sex, although Leonard says long working hours also play a role in this sex drought. In America, by contrast, it's 15 per cent. A mother and baby group saves Tsukasa, giving her much needed company. I had my first child in November last year and much of what Leonard describes rings true, from 'the physicality of the work and the psychic weight of suddenly occupying the position of parent' to the unparalleled joy of your baby's first laugh, and overthinking everything down to whether the baby should wear socks. So how does the UK measure up? In my experience we are overstretched on the medical side but lucky that it's free, there is pain relief and choice around birth (albeit with some bias from the NHS towards inductions over caesarean sections). • Sexism is still entrenched, with women taking most of the caring burden — and this is not helped by regressive paternity leave policies. Two weeks' paternity leave is nowhere near enough, nor is statutory maternity pay of £187.18 a week (less than the London living wage). Childcare costs are astronomically high too, but there are growing movements of women campaigning for more support. Four Mothers is part of this movement. It's public interest journalism at its best — powerful human stories peppered with well-chosen facts. When describing Tsukasa's relief at finding women to talk to, Leonard quotes the psychologist Aurélie Athan: 'Debriefing with other new mothers is crucial to psychological wellbeing. It's similar to what trauma victims require. They need to process what's happened to them.' With Four Mothers Leonard has provided that debrief, as she elegantly makes a compelling case for a fairer society.
