Why Do I Pay for a Coach? I'm a coach. But even I have a coach. Someone I pay to help me. And here's why. In a world where information is available in the palm of my hand, and we have turbo-charged AI reasoning to help answer the most random of questions (not necessarily correctly!), I often wonder if I need to pay for coaching. I can ask Copilot to write me a recipe. ChatGPT can give me a gym plan. Claude could work out a quiz for assessing how to help parents who are carers

The first time my daughter went abroad post-diagnosis was on a school trip. Diagnosed during Covid times, travel wasn't an option so when she got the chance to visit Barcelona with school, she reminded me of my promise two years earlier that I wouldn't let diabetes stand in the way of her doing what she wanted to do. Lucky enough to only have one child - and having missed our honeymoon thanks to Covid - hubby and I decided to have a mini-break in Barcelona so we could be on h

I wrote something yesterday about working while caring for a young person with Type 1 diabetes. It was, unsurprisingly, something I could write from personal experience. I'm a parent-carer. I've spent years figuring out how to make work fit around appointments, school, emergencies, disrupted nights and all the other things that come with caring for a child with Type 1. But once I'd finished writing it, I found myself thinking about something else. This isn't just a Type 1 dia

There’s something about caring for a child with Type 1 diabetes that can be difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. It’s not that the diagnosis is new anymore. You may have been doing this for years. You know how to count carbohydrates, respond to alarms, manage appointments and deal with the inevitable surprises. But that doesn’t mean the responsibility has gone away. Type 1 diabetes doesn’t clock off at 5pm. And neither does the mental load of caring for someon

When your child has Type 1 diabetes, letting them sleep away from home can be harder than letting them leave the house. Here’s how to manage the anxiety, build a safety net and gradually learn to let go. There is a particular kind of torture involved in being a parent of a child with Type 1 diabetes when they sleep somewhere else. At home, you know the routine. You know what they ate. You know how much insulin they had. You know how active they've been. You know whether that

Has your young person been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes during the summer holidays? Read one parent's experience of preparing for the return to school, coping with uncertainty and finding ways to look after yourself too.

The first time my daughter went abroad with school, I chose to go too. Not because the school told me I had to. Because I was worried. She had never been abroad without us before. She had Type 1 diabetes. I didn't know how I would feel about her being in another country, relying on other people to recognise what she needed. So I made a decision that worked for us. I booked my own flights. I found somewhere to stay. I travelled separately and stayed nearby while she went on th

Holidays are something you're meant to look forward to, aren't they? A week or two of rest and relaxation. A change of scenery. Something to make happy memories. If you're a parent, you'll know that suddenly that nice little break you had pre-children isn't the stress-free trip you'd maybe like. Refereeing over whether it's the beach or a theme park or a more cultured day out. Maintaining the only one ice-cream-a-day rule. Making sure the whole week's budget isn't blown on d

How my life was transformed in an Asda car park

As a parent, it is common to feel overwhelmed and constantly pulled in different directions by the demands of family and friends -...