IF YOU still nurse strange ideas about only children being sad and isolated, a recent survey should help dispel these thoughts.
Society may, on the whole, have dumped its homophobic, racist and sexist prejudices, but stereotypes about children without siblings persist.
You know the sort of thing: those who do not have brothers and sisters are all lonely, spoiled and anti-social. These ideas are about as brainless as a multi-seeded loaf and, unfortunately, just as ingrained.
During the 15 years I taught primary school pupils, there were some youngsters who appeared friendless or lacking social skills, but they were from a variety of backgrounds and from every size of family.
If it were discovered they were an only child, their problems would automatically be attributed to this.
The popular, confident and easygoing youngsters also included those with and without siblings, but no one would say an only child's success was because of his or her family status, would they?
Only children are still often labelled spoiled brats, even though, in Europe, single child families are common - and it's catching on here. Such households now make up 46 per cent of all families in Britain, outnumbering those with two children by more than half a million.
The latest findings come from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, in which about 100,000 people from 40,000 homes were questioned.
It concluded the opposite to the popular view: the fewer siblings a child has, the happier he or she is.
The findings were backed up by Michele Elliott, director of anti-bullying charity Kidscape, who said, in her experience, only children are rarely lonely.
It is just the perception of other people.
**FINALLY: Mr F and I have just got back from seeing the witty Armstrong and Miller in their sell-out show, part of a nationwide tour. We caught them at Oxford New Theatre. It was so good to enjoy intelligent humour that wasn't based on humiliation or jokes about the holocaust or Baby P, as with some current touring comics.
I also popped in to the Compass Theatre in Ickenham to hear popular poet Wendy Cope reading some of her down-to-earth verses.
Brilliant! More events like this in Hillingdon, please.
