Like a lot of mothers, Angela Cuming is frankly sick of Jamie Oliver parenting advice. Get ready for a rant about Oliver and the army of judgers who don’t know shit about kids who are picky eaters. I like to keep a couple of Jamie Oliver cookbooks in my kitchen. I find them incredibly handy … Read more
How did we ever reach a point where ‘Is it OK to kiss your kids?’ was actually asked multiple times around the world in apparently reputable news outlets? Angela Cuming looks at one of this week’s most infuriating parenting stories. Here are things parents do that I find weird: Smacking their kids Bullying their kids … Read more
It’s New Zealand’s most successful city slogan by far, and the council had nothing to do with it. Angela Cuming finds out how a grassroots social media movement created an explosion of civic pride. A hot November afternoon, 2012, and a lime green picnic bench flashed up on my computer screen. It was from a … Read more
Angela Cuming remembers watching Twin Peaks as a child, and the power cut that kept Laura Palmer’s killer a mystery. I was only 10 years old when Twin Peaks – and the real world – found me. Once a week, in the dark, I would sit on the sofa bed in Dad’s home office and, … Read more
In The Night Garden is the creepiest kids show on TV. Every parent knows it. Angela Cuming digs deep to find out who invented this terrible and annoying show that children all over the world adore. “That is the creepiest fucking show. My kids love it but it is creepy as fuck.” That was my … Read more
Angela Cuming gave birth to twins in Northern Ireland, under the British National Health Service. She reflects on the difference of care she received there compared to her oldest child’s birth in New Zealand. When my identical twin boys were born via c-section the doctors had me walk, crying and in pain, into the operating … Read more
Angela Cuming has three children under three – all boys. Here she talks about the joys and challenges of her family life. My name is Angela, I have three boys under three and I haven’t slept in three-and-half years. There’s Charlie, he came first and when he was 20 months old we welcomed identical twins Tommy … Read more
Following the announcement that The Big Bang Theory is getting its own spinoff series, Angela Cuming goes off like a bloody rocket to Mars. There are three things I never bring up in a social setting: politics, religion, or The Big Bang Theory. The first two are tricky, but I can handle them OK – … Read more
When it comes to sleep, identical twin babies might just hold the key to understanding what’s nature and what’s nurture – if twins have the same DNA and a mum who treats them the same, then surely it’s obvious: they’ll be two non-sleepers or two sleepers. If only it were that simple, says twin mum … Read more
For many families Christmas isn’t about the birth of Jesus. Angela Cuming explains why she chooses to have a life, and Christmas, without religion. I was five years old when the Catholic Church told me I’d never get into heaven. An unbaptised child of two Roman Catholic parents, it had been a great aunt’s dying … Read more
Have you heard? If you lie about Santa you’re a monster and your children are going to need therapy forever. Nonsense, says Angela Cuming – maintaining the Santa myth will be the best gift you give your kids this Christmas. When my father died in May 1990, Christmas died with it. A wonderful, kind and … Read more