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Are there any burning questions you want to ask about your child's behaviour? We're running a Q&A session with author and foster mum Cathy Glass, whose latest book Happy Kids: The Secrets to Raising Well-Behaved, Contented Children is a practical guide to managing children's behaviour.

Talk Round-up
5 February 2010 

This week we welcomed our new confused smiley to the Mumsnet emoticon gallery, which came in handy for our latest deconstruction of The Tiger Who Came To Tea. DifferentID thinks that the mummy is a Mumsnetter: "Doesn't anyone else think that mummy spent all day on here instead of getting tea sorted for the evening?" But Dr RedLentil explained that: "The tiger is a figure for women's desire... Daddy restores patriarchal order by applying reason to the situation with his 'good idea'." Theyoungvisiter stroked her beard while agreeing: "The food orgy is a symbol." And domesticslattern declared: "I always thought that the book was an expression of the Bakhtinian spirit of the carnivalesque." "I think Sophie and her mother should have done a more in-depth dynamic risk assessment of the whole tiger situation," reflected BikeRunSki. "Tiger is a freeloader, trust me," tutted LittlePushka. "I went out with him once or twice. Ended up in same skanky café that Sophie's family frequent."

Has anyone been to an interesting wedding? asked bintofbohemia, who was tiring of mundane nuptials: "Weddings in TV and films are always interesting affairs but, in real life, they always seem a bit dull." ArcticFox's vicar forgot her and her husband's names: "So he said, 'Welcome, everyone, to the Church of St James and, in particular, we would like to welcome [long pause] ... these people who are getting married.'" Domesticslattern had attended a wedding where the bride had a massive strop during the reception and flounced off home because "everyone keeps staring at me!" Australian celebrant smugaboo was rather put off during a bush wedding when two emus waddled over to investigate the commotion: "One was standing about a foot away from me, just staring at me when I was trying to conduct the ceremony. I tried to remain professional."

LaurieFairyCake wanted to know if she was being unreasonable not to meet the demands of her daughter's Home Ec teacher who had requested that tomatoes be sent in to complete the lesson in macaroni cheese: "It's not part of the dish and I don't buy tomatoes out of season. Would I be utterly poncey to send in parsley instead, and a note saying I don't have tomatoes?" "Asking for trouble," barked moondog, "but then again, I am the woman who brings smoked salmon sarnies to kids' parties and donated caviar to the school fête." "My mum still goes on about how her dad sent her to school in brogues with leather nailed to the soles instead of hockey boots," chastised ToffeeCrumble. "It's exactly the same as parsley instead of toms." "Don't make her stand out because of your principles about out-of-season fruit," demanded inbuiltcolourtv. "Cookery-garnish martyrdom should be freely sought, not imposed!"

National treasure Fairy Liquid is celebrating its half-century and wants to know what ingenious creations we used to rustle up from old-fashioned Fairy bottles. "We did once moot a Fairy bottle as a suitably space-age coffin for a hamster," recalled snigger, "but this was overturned, even in the '70s, as being inorganic and wrong." "I have been advised that the old Fairy bottles make very good dog collars for vicars," reported MaryBS, while Mustrunmore engineered a complicated desk tidy from several bottles: "And then - and this was the master stroke - I covered each part in a page from Smash Hits." "I made a Heath Robinson hydroponic watering system with old Fairy bottles and cotton pyjama cords as wicks," reported GentleOtter. "The cucumbers were massive." But MadamDeathstare out-geeked us all with her love of oil-refinery equipment: "I used a Fairy bottle to make the shell of a scale model of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. It had 64 straws arranged in the correct tube arrangement with cardboard tube plates." Now where's that confused emoticon when you need it..?

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