Jack — age 9

Incred­i­bly bright, some­times highly strung, always polite and charm­ing and ready to make you laugh with some awful pun, usu­ally found with a book in his hand.

Jack is very aca­d­e­mic and very quick, but is quick to get frus­trated and often tries to take short cuts.  Cre­ative and full of flair his sto­ries are a joy to read.  He has a phe­nom­e­nal read­ing speed and loves col­lect­ing books.  The out­go­ing, socia­ble one in the family.

Sam — age 5

Sam’s like to bounce and col­lect soft toys.

A lot mel­lower than Jack. Sam is a thinker, you will often see him pause and you can almost see the cogs work as he processes an idea.  He likes to cat­e­gorise the world and make dis­tinc­tions between good or bad, real and fic­tion for exam­ple.  If you tell him some­thing that does not fit in with his def­i­n­i­tion of the world, he will calmly but very adamantly insist you are wrong.  Not as aca­d­e­m­i­cally quick as Jack but is more inter­ested in the world at large and has remark­able mem­ory for recall­ing facts (if not for remem­ber­ing to put on pants in the morn­ing).  Sam is very self con­tained and happy bounc­ing or play­ing alone.   Loves any­thing to do with Ancient History.

Sarah — age 32

Mum.  Rapidly grey­ing and spread­ing out­wards (not that I was ever slim).

Spent a cou­ple of years at Uni­ver­sity train­ing as a teacher before giv­ing up in dis­gust at the amount of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion in teach­ing practice.

Bummed around doing var­i­ous jobs until found voca­tion as a Mum.  Love work­ing with and inter­act­ing with kids and do a fair amount of vol­un­tary work as well as being a self employed con­trib­u­tor to kids activ­ity web­sites, Activ­ity Vil­lage in particular.

Love read­ing and sewing while I get the chance. Cur­rently study­ing maths with OU as a bit of inter­est (have done a Social Pol­icy degree with them).  Pos­si­bly have a ten­dency to try and fit in doing too much

Pete — age 42

Usu­ally at work but likes to be involved where he can (as long as it doesn’t involve socialising).

Very intel­li­gent and more than a lit­tle geeky, so I defer dif­fi­cult ques­tions to him.  Boys adore him and are def­i­nitely Daddy’s boys.