Causes Airborne substances (pollens) that attack the upper respiratory passages – the nose, sinus, throat and the eyes. From April to May tree pollens are the main allergen, from May to August it's grass pollen, and in late summer weed pollens.Symptoms Itchy and watery eyes, freq...

WHEN YOUR CHILD first heads off to school, it can be hard to let go. You remember your own teachers – the inspiring, the boring and the downright useless. What’s this one going to be like? And most importantly, how can you get the best out of her and ensure your child’s time at...

North EastBeamish ChristmasNovember 30–February 2Meet Santa in his fireside grotto at Beamish Museum and see the town and pit village arrayed in decorations from the 1900s.Time: 10am–4pm (Tues–Thurs). Cost: £16 (adults), £10 (children).Beamish, County Durham DH9 0RG.Durham Victor...

The 20th century was a revolution in children’s dress. Proper childrenswear, such as the all-in-one skeleton suit for boys, and uncorseted empire lines for girls, allowed, at long last, the wearer to actually move.

Dressing siblings in matching outfits gives the family a neat look – just look at the Beckham boys. But, according to psychologists, dressing siblings identically might not be the best thing for their developing identities. So think before following suit.

Trends may come and go, but the children’s look inspired by generations of royals (think Queen Victoria dressing her children in kilts at Balmoral; or little Charles and Anne in their double-breasted, velvet-collared Harris tweed coats) has run and run. Parents still swoon over “...

Little Lord Fauntleroy was created by author Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1886, but it was the illustrations by Reginald Birch that sealed the Fauntleroy look. The velvet breeches and white lace collar worn by Cedric in the novel were also worn by the author’s two sons.

You may well think pink is for girls and blue is for boys but historically, more often than not, the opposite was true. Instead, boys wore pink because of its associations with the ‘power’ colour red, whilst girls were more likely to be clad in ‘Virgin Mary’ blue.

Resourceful parents, like Sex & The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, still employ this canny thrift. “My son James Wilkie only wears hand-me-downs,” she says, “I don’t think I have ever bought him clothes.”

"It is impossible to overemphasise the role played by knitted garments in the democratisation of children’s clothes,” says Noreen Marshall, author of Dictionary Of Children’s Clothes. Knitwear became popular after zoologist Dr Gustav Jäger wrote in 1850 that people might live hea...