I'm not dead and I haven't given up this blogging caper, I've just been to busy doing the mother and housewife thing. It's boring, I know.

The other day I was looking into free activities for young kids that our local city council provides to us good ratepaying working families. I saw something that I thought might be fun for one of our young ones, except that this free kids' activity session included an element of vigorous exercise, presumably with the aim of preventing or curing the much-hyped epidemic of childhood obesity. This is the last thing that our youngest needs. My gene for childhood hyperactivity has certainly not been wasted. You know your child is genuinely very active when they often complain of aching legs after particularly busy days. I think it's funny that this child of ours is probably very much in vogue this year, because these days everyone is supposed to be getting children to be more active than they otherwise might have been, and obesity and lack of fitness are some childhood disorders that are now most fashionable things to hate. Active children are "in" this year and children who like to stay put for long periods of time are "out" this year. But I cast my mind back to the time when I had my first very active young child. I felt most defensive. Back then it was definitely not the desired look to have a child who is a blur of hyper-excitable haste. That time was the tail-end of ADHD mania. When fashionable young mums get together to chat these days they might swap tales about their son's speech therapist or OT, but back then the chatter was often about which foods or drinks or chemical substances were thought to trigger manic and unmanageable behaviour in our troublesome offspring, usually sons. So I'd like to congratulate all of those mums and dads, child health nurses, parent educators, natural therapists, doctors, prescribing paediatricians, parenting experts and inferfering grandparents who set their minds to curing the terrible epidemic of childhood hyperactivity back in the 1980s, the 1990s and earlier decades. You did well, rather too well. Be careful what you wish for.