While we may think we're protecting children by wrapping them in cotton wool, we're filling them with false ideas of the world we live in.

OOD grief, what on earth are we doing to our children? Two new reports this week make the heart sink. One says that we're turning our children into a generation of hypochondriacs because we're fussing too much over their health and our own. And another says that not only do children no longer play outside, but they don't even WANT to play outside - because they're too frightened. Anxious adults have filled their heads with fear. So children think, apparently, that if they take one step over the doorstep they'll be abducted by paedophiles, run over by a juggernaut or bombed by terrorists.

Well, yes. All or any of these things might happen. But it's far more likely that they won't. So can we get a sense of proportion here?

True, traffic now is a much greater danger than it's ever been - more reason, one would have thought, for getting children out there earlier, learning how to cope with it. But otherwise, there have always been risks for children - there have always been paedophiles and creepy old men, and bullies who'd have your dinner money off you before you got to the end of the street. And just think what Little Red Riding Hood had to put up with.

The difference was that our parents - possibly because they were too busy to take much notice - just pushed us on our way with brisk advice to be careful, look both ways, stand up for yourself and be home in time for tea. And, pretty much, we did.

The irony, of course, is that in trying to keep our children safe, we make their lives even more dangerous. Sedentary kids get fat and unhealthy and are more likely to die early of preventable diseases. Children who are ferried everywhere by car are far more likely to be one of the 40 a year killed in car crashes, or one of the 9,000 injured - as opposed to the five who are murdered by strangers.

And instead of encouraging our children to be bold and adventurous, and teaching them that the world is a wonderful, exciting - and challenging - place, we're merely making them timid. That is desperately sad.

Now children are so scared of the Big World that when they finally make it out over the doorstep by themselves, they dash straight into the pub and throw as much booze down their necks as they can.

That's not binge drinking, that's Dutch courage.

And after all the scare stories we've fed them, can you really blame them?

IS there a working mother in the land who hasn't bought shop mince pies, bashed them around a bit and presented them to the school Christmas party as her own? Relax. You're in good company.

Delia Smith has just revealed that when doing the cricket teas for her husband' s club back in the 1980s, instead of slaving over a hot butter knife, she would occasionally just pile the plates with sarnies from Marks & Sparks and pretend.

Oh joy.

If it's good enough for the Blessed Delia...

I AM still dubious over all the figures relating to unauthorised sick leave.

Despite all our apparently family-friendly legislation, it is still far easier for a mother - or father - to ring in and pretend to be sick themselves, than it is for them to say that actually, they're fine but they have to stay at home and look after a sick child.

And until more bosses accept that that is a perfectly legitimate reason for staying at home, an awful lot of parents will still be phoning in with a "bit of a bug".

HOORAY for Harry Potter. Well, not just him but Hermione and Ron Weasley too, otherwise known as young actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. Going through adolescence can be pretty grim when you spend half your life skulking in your bedroom. How much worse when you're doing it in the glare of the limelight.

So congratulations to the Harry Potter actors who seem - in a wide range of interviews publicising the new film - to be remarkably well-balanced and pleasant.

Congratulations too to the actors' friends. Daniel Radcliffe, for instance, says that no one sucks up to him. "In fact, my friends are probably crueller to me now," he says.

Good. For when half the world's in love with you, a friend with a sharp tongue can be the best friend of all.