Our grown-up kids may still be at home, but tempting as it is, we shouldn't smother them

ARE you a helicopter mother? If so, it might be time to whirr off. Helicopter mother is the new name for mothers who constantly hover over their children's lives, overseeing every aspect of it, not just in babyhood, but right up through college years and beyond, now that so many young graduates are back in the family home.

Have these mothers no lives of their own?

Bad enough that a cash-strapped young adult has to live at home, but even grimmer if they have an anxious parent sorting out everything from their laundry to their social lives and still treating them as though they were off to playgroup every day rather than to work.

No wonder 30 is the new adolescence.

True, in our house we have a boomerang boy in temporary, semi-detached residence at the moment. I do his laundry quite often, feed him occasionally. But I have refrained from threading his mittens on elastic through his sleeves. And frankly, the less I know about his social life, his work and his money worries, the better.

There is only so much a mother can face.

It's easy to see how it happens, though. Mothers are, after all, conditioned to caring. When you still have your baby in the nest, it's hard to switch off. You start by helping, but then end up taking over or interfering. And the more you do for them, the less they will ever learn to do for themselves.

There have been stories of fussing mothers ringing their child's work to complain about the boss, or asking a university to find them some friends. Arrgghh..

Half of all men and more than a third of women between 20 and 24 go back to live at home after university. Fine. But just because they live with you it doesn't mean they're still children. They're not. They're grown-ups. Let them get on with it.

The greatest gift a parent can give a child, I say, is independence, wherever they live. Time to bring that helicopter down to earth and let your children take off on their own.

BAD enough that you might soon have to pay council tax on the view from your home, as all sorts of pleasant extras - garden, garage, quiet location - that add to the value of your house could also add to an increase in council tax under the proposed revaluation.

But what really makes your heart sink is that the revaluations will be undertaken as part of a "new computer assessed mass appraisal".

When you think "government" and "computer" in the same sentence, the result is usually chaos. Think tax credit... Child Support Agency... passports...air traffic control... MOD payments... Half the extra money raised on increased council tax will probably go to pay for the new computer system.

The other half will no doubt go to pay the consultants who will have to sort out the resulting chaos.

And after all that, will local services be any better? Well, let's take a wild guess.

Camilla's

quiet coup

Didn't she do well? Camilla, that is. Her first official royal trip to America - very much in the shadow of Diana - and it all went very smoothly. And I've just realised why.

The Duchess of Cornwall didn't make controversial speeches or hog the limelight, she didn't wear daft hats, revealing dresses or flutter her eyelashes and flirt. She didn't dance with John Travolta.

In fact, she didn't draw attention to herself at all. She was just there, smiling a lot, sort of in the background, being nice to people.

Just, in fact, like you hope your mum will be at weddings, graduations, prize days and sports days - blending in, being proud and supportive but not at all embarrassing.

Camilla has grown-up children, grown-up stepchildren. She knows how middle-aged mothers should behave in public. And what's good in a mother is brilliant in a duchess.

And probably even better in a wife to the heir to the throne.

How men think they rule the roads

BAD luck chaps. Women are actually better drivers than men. Scientists at Bradford University have proved that we are better at doing more than two things at once - i.e. keeping the car on the road while watching out for other traffic.

That's probably only half the picture, though. One of the problems with male drivers is that they think they are kings of the road and are still far more likely to expect everything else to get out of their way - cars, lorries, bikes, trees, walls, lamp-posts.

ONE in ten schoolchildren apparently don't know that chips are made from potatoes.

So what's new? A generation ago, we were moaning that children didn't know that milk comes from cows. Children, hopefully, still have time to learn about their food.

What's really worrying is the number of adults who are absolutely clueless - like the checkout staff who don't know the difference between leeks and runner beans, or who haven't even heard of beetroot, let alone able to recognise it.

Or men who think a balanced diet is a pint in each hand.

Healthy eating? It's not just children who need lessons.