Lucy's blog

A friend forwarded me a really interesting article by journalist Simon Kuper in the FT magazine recently. It tells the story of how, in Jamaica in the 1980s, a group of community health workers began to make weekly visits to babies whose growth had been stunted by infection...

This post may be a little controversial (and I welcome your feedback) but I really don't agree with the concept of ?baby signing? which has become very fashionable these days. This is for one reason only - I genuinely think it delays children's speech...

One question that my teachers and I are frequently asked by Perform parents is ?Where should my child be at this stage?? And if I'm completely honest, as a mother myself, it's a question that I find myself asking about my own children too. I guess, as parents,...

If you read my blogs regularly, you'll know that I like to talk about communication skills and how important it is that we make children confident communicators from an early age. As you might expect, this is something that we are passionate about at Perform. In fact,...

There’s been a lot of discussion in the press recently about Pamela Druckman’s intriguingly named book,  French Children Don’t Throw Food, which promises "parenting secrets from Paris". I’m always a bit sceptical about...

When we train our teachers for Perform classes, one of the sections we spend the longest time working on is their voices. I'm not talking about their singing voices here; they are, after all, trained actors and singers and wouldn't get to the training stage if they...

Sorry for the slight hiatus. I've just come back from two wonderful weeks in Umbria and, a holiday being a change after all, my husband and I agreed a social media fast as well. Anyway, now that's over,I can get on with gorging myself again - phew! So holidays with...

Behaviour has been at the forefront of my mind this week. After the sugar-fuelled highs of Easter and the tantrum/headache-inducing lows of 'back to school', I've been considering how to regain some routine, balance and harmony into my family life. Ok, so...

My 3 year old is at that stage where he can be quite inconsolable when he wants something and isn't getting it. Frequently, this is for the most trivial of reasons - such as the fact that his sister has the toy he wants to play with. But whatever the cause, when it...

Most children love music, whether it's singing nursery rhymes complete with actions (of course), having a little dance or even listening to something more soothing before they go to sleep. My Mum loves to tell people about how I would make up my own songs when I was...