I think it was raising children that made me wish away the years. I didn’t see the decade whisper past until yesterday when I looked in the mirror and noticed my beard turning white. Am I growing up at last?

Coping with your teenager

Long gone, the playful lad, once so loving and kind. In his place, an aggressive brute, snarling ferociously, who would shove his old man violently and beat his own mother. May God grant his parents patience and protect them from harm.

I don’t have a problem with our son learning a trade and pursuing a career working with his hands. I might have done the same in different circumstances. A profession — medicine, accountancy, law, engineering — is not for everyone, whatever our parents and peers may think. Last night, we visited the construction facilities at …

Having also struggled through education myself, I ought to be our son’s greatest advocate. At this juncture, my parents were despairing at me too, as my teachers predicted I was about to fail all of my GCSEs. That I didn’t and actually did moderately well in the final exams should position me well to encourage …

I’m a terrible dad. I told the kids not to talk at me. Explained how conversations are supposed to work. Asked for dialogue instead of monologue. Reminded them it’s okay to pause for breath, or fill the space between us with silence. A better dad would have stopped what he was doing, turned his entire …

Alas, we must acknowledge that regularly having your heart broken comes with the territory of being a parent.

I first met my mother-in-law twenty-four years ago, in the late autumn of 2001, during my first trip to Turkey. I’d just been made redundant from my only recently secured job in Maidenhead — last in, first out — but had been retained as a freelancer. The visit wasn’t long-planned. It was an urgent, spontaneous …

Allah rahmet eylesin. Mekânı cennet olsun.

Sometimes, it seems, the only way forward is to hit crisis point.

“Today’s definitely a day for a coat,” I say, coming in from the storm. Our son looks at me with contempt. “I am NOT wearing a coat,” he barks. I look down at myself, drenched just dashing from the car to the door. “It’s pouring down out there,” I mutter. “You see, this is the …

I didn’t see the years tumbling by. There we were, 17 years ago, reeling from the trauma of childlessness. Then those two souls fell into our lives, and a decade and a half flew by. Suddenly, I glance in the mirror and find grey in my beard. One minute I was thirty, and then…

On our way back from tuition on the eve of his mocks, our lad declares, “I don’t need GCSES. I’m getting an iPhone anyway.” The promise of a shiny smartphone was supposed to serve as motivation, to give him something to aim for. This worked for his sister, as the promise of a HiFi or …

It’s true: we cannot be fair, caught in the middle of these sibling rivalries. If we try to encourage one of them, we are unfair to the other. If we tell one off, we are unfair again. On and on it goes. He said, she said. She did, he did. If that was me… Yes, …

It’s our fault, for settling so far away from our families. We could have stayed Up North, I suppose, to have grandparents near at hand. But then, they too moved to the South West in recent years, near to my sister. A few years back, my parents would take the children for a couple of …