I am Devon Ashworth, and Growing Up at Home is where I write down what actually happened in a house where somebody is always growing out of something.
There are two kids here, five years apart, which turns out to be its own weather system. The house is ordinary. The hallway floorboards squeak in exactly the wrong places. One bedroom is big enough for two beds only if you accept that nobody will ever open the wardrobe fully. Nothing about this is going to be renovated away, so everything I write starts from the house as it is rather than the house in the photograph.
Why the mistakes stay in
Most of what I know about running this place, I learned by doing it badly first. I childproofed an entire floor and left a stapler on a low shelf. I bought a beautiful toy storage system organised by category, which is not how a four year old thinks, and it was abandoned inside a fortnight. Those attempts are in the articles, because knowing which mistake you are currently making is usually more useful than being handed a finished answer that assumes you never made it.
What is covered here
Eight areas, and they do not change. Baby and toddler days. Kids’ rooms. Play and mess. Family routines. School years. Growing independence. Sibling life. Keeping the house working. I would rather go deep on eight things than shallow on forty, and a parenting site that covers everything usually covers nothing.
How a piece gets made
A change lives in this house for weeks before it becomes an article. The first week flatters almost any system, because it is new and everyone is briefly interested in it. By week four the chore chart has a sticker missing and nobody has mentioned it in eleven days, and that is the part worth writing down. Where something only worked because of a particular condition, a specific age gap, a school that emails rather than sends paper, a kid who happens to like tidying, the article names the condition instead of stating the rule flat.
What this is not
It is not expert advice. I am not a paediatrician, a child psychologist, or a sleep consultant, and where a question belongs to one of those people the article says so and stops. It is also not a house that looks like the photographs. The photographs illustrate an idea. They are not pictures of my hallway, which currently has a scooter in it.
Getting in touch
Write to me at [email protected]. I read everything, and I answer most of it eventually.