WHEN I was a child holidaying on the Irish coast, we happily shivered and froze in the deep, green cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean, emerging blue, with chattering teeth, to be wrapped in thick towels after only about 20 minutes, even on the sunniest of days.

But in recent years, more and more Irish children have been wearing wet suits to play happily, and warmly, in the sea for hours on end. We got our boys some two years ago. "You have it lucky," we told them. "We used to come out of the water with icicles dripping from our noses and goose pimples the size of oranges."

To us, wet suits were the sort of thing only deep sea divers, or the man who delivers the Black Magic in the TV adverts, wore. But this year, back in Ireland, we decided to treat ourselves to a warm dip in the sea.

Of course, we felt ridiculous. My husband, whose wet suit has a logo pattern on the chest, emerged from our holiday cottage looking like a ludicrous version of a comic book superhero - think Ardal O'Hanlon's Thermo Man. Mine felt like a giant, skin-tight romper suit. But my, the water felt warm. It was gorgeous.

Over the next few weeks, we swam most days. In the rain, even at night. We snorkelled in the large rock pools. We dived into the lagoon. It transformed our holiday. Kids today, as we're forever telling them, have it easy. But it's about time we adults got in on the act. Thanks to our wetsuits, we've conquered the Atlantic. Next stop the North Sea.

I FOUND this week's article in The Northern Echo, about the challenge of holidaying with young children, interesting. With five boys aged 11 months to 11 years, it's a challenge I know about all too well.

One problem is, because the younger ones can't keep up with what the older ones want to do, we have to split up for various activities. But this year we managed, inadvertently, to enjoy a fantastic adventure together.

I planned to climb the Everest-shaped Errigal mountain - at 2,500 feet, the tallest in Donegal - with the bigger boys while my husband, who did it last year, brought the four-year-old and the baby in a backpack to do a bit at the beginning and meet us later at the bottom.

But the four-year-old, who normally can't walk round the park without having to be carried "because my little legs are tired" surprised us all when he kept going all the way to the top. True, he needed rewards of sweets and plenty of rests along the way but, encouraged by his older brothers, he rose to the challenge.

Of course, he may be sorry next time he demands to be carried in the park. Because now we'll can remind him just what he's capable of.

IF you watch Malcolm In The Middle - one of the funniest programmes on TV - you may have seen the episode where the family arrive for a barge holiday and, while everyone unloads the car, the youngest boy, Dewey, runs onto the boat to investigate. Minutes later he appears, hands in the air, screaming in horror. "There's no TV. There's no TV," he yells.

With us, the opposite happened. To the boys' disgust, the cottage we rent every year has never had a TV - until this year. "There's a TV. There's a TV", screamed our seven-year-old, mimicking Dewey. What a shame so many of the programmes were in Gaelic.