NOT heard of Lili TarkowReinisch yet?

Well, you soon will. She’s one of London’s hottest new songwriters.

Her lyrics are being promoted across the Atlantic to Grammy-award winning singers like Carrie Underwood, and to American Idol.

Not bad going, considering Lili is also a full-time psychotherapist, wife, mother of two, Aikido black belt and marathon runner.

And the sole decorator of her Ralph Lauren-meets-Louis-Vuitton-andAndrew-Martin-style apartment.

The entrance hall to her west London home sets the dramatic tone.

A Senegalese burial outfit hangs on the wall and the corridor is flanked with wooden African fertility symbols in museum display cabinets.

There’s an Art Deco ebony console table and, on the floor, zebra skin.

Even the nearby loo has walls of black oak planks that were used underwater as sea defences to stop enemy submarines during the War.

Lili greets me in Chanel, jeans and bling. Her hair is waist-length and her eyelashes almost as long. “Never underestimate the superficial,” she laughs.

Originally from St Louis, she came to England 15 years ago. “I came here to do a Masters in Economics at LSE.

My knowledge of the Maastricht Treaty made me the darling of every party!”

Afterwards, she returned to her private psychotherapy practice.

The apartment in which she now lives with her hedge-fund husband, Mark, and their children is stylish.

“Home” wasn’t always thus.

“When I was 12, my father left us in such penury that my mother had to apply for a special permit for me to work,” she recalls.

“Our neighbourhood was disparagingly dubbed ‘Indian Ghettos’.

“We got food stamps – which the Government give you when you’re really poor.

Our motto at home was, ‘If it ain’t broke, it will be soon’.”

Her “escape” came with a scholarship to Washington University, and she hasn’t stopped working since.

It was with a desire to put all this behind her that she tackled her décor.

The couple bought the flat five years ago: Mark liked it because it didn’t need any refurbishment.

Lili, however, had other ideas – for changing every room!

It took three years to get planning permission to knock down walls.

“For a year we lived with builders to save money.”

The experience was worse for Mark.

“I dusted him every morning before work.

He was initially resistant to the changes, so every time he travelled, I’d take a wall down!

Once, he went to his beloved steam room but it was already in the skip.”

The new look is bold, masculine, aesthetically harmonious and somewhat disturbing.

There are white walls and bleached lime oak floorboards.

“But everything has a dark side.

The flat’s full of creatures that have been captured.

Analyse that,” she says, surveying the sitting room with its reindeer rugs over sofas, old zebra skins and antler candelabra.

“That’s not just a picture of a rodeo,” she says, pointing to a wall-sized photograph.

“It’s a prison rodeo.

A sculpture, Missing Boy 3, by the Korean artist Ki June Park is purposely unsettling.

And Tim Shaw’s ‘Man on Fire’ bronze should make you cry.”

It’s also an oasis of brown, silver and monochrome.

“When the man came to design the fish tank in the TV room, he thought I was joking when I said, ‘Only black and white fish – anything with colour becomes a fish finger’.”

Underlying this order is a sense of hedonism. “There’s a bar you can dance on, and every room’s set up for a party.

A sound system follows you around the flat – anything by Shwayze, Wrapt-Up productions or Lo-Star.”

And there’s a wine fridge in most rooms.

“Yeah, pure class,” she laughs.

The sitting room is where everything happens, from seeing patients to recording music and writing songs (“with Jerry Meehan who tours with Robbie Williams, Ellie Golding who’s always in the papers, And Leo Whiteley, who signs stars for Notting Hill Music.”)

There are tribal artefacts, a yee-hah! Remington cowboy sculpture and vintage Louis Vuitton.

But also a grand piano, lead-lined acoustic floorboards and ceiling. Ceiling-height black oak cupboards conceal the kind of technical gear that warms her “trailer-park heart”. Like much of the furniture, she designed these cupboards.

“If I can’t afford something, I get it copied or hit Lots Road.”

This stylish thrift extends to the children’s rooms, despite their Ralph Lauren sleigh beds.

“There’s not a single thing they couldn’t take to their first flats.”

(The kids are aged eight and 11.)

And what of the master bedroom, an Asian enclave with Tang horses?

“Our heavenly Vi- Spring mattress is the star turn alongside my closet of car-to-bar vertiginous heels and Ruhlmanninspired tallboy.

The photographs of vintage cars are all Portobello Road finds.”

She pauses.

“Much of what’s here only costs a fiver.

But the cheap stuff’s beautifully lit, so looks expensive.”

It’s also a home bursting with love, laughter and style.

Now all she needs is a Grammy in the loo.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK

Lighting: All Square (020 7727 0606, www.allsquaregrp.co.uk) .

Handmade beds: Vi-Spring (01752 366311, www.vispring.co.uk).

Audio: BOSE sound system (0800 1074999, www.bose.co.uk); integrated lighting and music from Lutron Homeworks (020 7702 0657, or visit www.lutron.com); and Redhorn Audio Visual (020 7486 8604/8605, www.redhornav.com).

Kitchen: Gaggenau appliances (0870 840 2003); units by Clive Christian (020 7349 9200, london@clive.com).

Antiques and artifacts: Ralph Lauren (020 7535 4600) for sleigh beds. Henry Gregory Antiques (Portobello Road, 020 7792 9221) for vintage Louis Vuitton. Sebastiano Barbagallo (020 7792 3320) for African art.

Display items: from Striking Displays, Brighton (01273 423623) for Perspex display cases.

Aquarium: designed and supplied by Aquatic Design Centre (020 7636 6388).

When Christian Constantine was born, the doctors at London’s Portland hospital had never seen such severe cranio-facial deformities. They didn’t, and still don’t, have a name for his condition, but he is believed to be one of four people in the world with a combination of so many rare and serious defects. At 23, he has endured more than 35 operations, including highly risky major reconstructive ones. He has also faced the possibility of blindness, had his kidneys operated on, gone deaf in one ear and suffered life-threatening illnesses such as meningitis and hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain that causes compression).

Yet Christian’s is a story of hope, determination and extreme bravery, which he has chronicled in a memoir for which literary agents Curtis Brown are seeking a publisher. We meet in the central London apartment belonging to Christian’s mother, Mina, and father, Adam, a company director; who are both Greek but were raised in London. With his scarred forehead, slightly drooping right eyelid and somewhat distended cheek, Christian is now taken by most people for an accident victim rather than someone born with a rare combination of disabilities. He talks from the back of his throat, with a nasal tone: speech that, owing to therapy, is vastly improved since he was at nursery, when only his family understood him. (“At the time, I thought that was normal,” he says later.)

Mina, 52, offers me biscuits, chocolate, fruit and tea. “I didn’t know anything was wrong until Christian was born and I saw my doctor’s eyes,” she says. “Then they put me to sleep again immediately. I didn’t see him for three days. Not until the nurses said, ‘First we’re going to show a Polaroid picture of baby to mummy.’ That’s when I insisted on actually seeing him. He was very wrong-looking indeed. But I felt love at first sight.”

The doctors were mystified. The bones of Christian’s face had stopped forming prematurely, he had hypertiliorism, which meant that his eyes were too far apart and his eyebrows abnormally high, and a severe cleft lip and palate, leaving the roof of his mouth open and the top gum exposed. (“That thing protruding from my lip is the roof of my mouth, I think,” says Christian later, showing me photographs, including one of his mother holding him adoringly, and another of him aged three and wearing a bow tie with his father.) “They didn’t even know whether he was going to live,” says Mina, who had him baptised in intensive care when he was three days old.

At the time, the doctors were particularly concerned that the frontal lobe of his brain had been damaged by the cleft, which went up to his forehead. “They mentioned putting him in a home and also said, ‘If he gets ill, we won’t try hard to save him, all right?'” says Mina. “I said, ‘I agree.’ That’s the only time I ever felt that, when I thought he might be brain-damaged and not have a quality of life. Happily, he was fine. He had his first operation at six weeks, to repair his cleft lip. But nobody had any idea that we’d still be operating nearly 24 years later.”

In the intervening years – from Chicago to Houston, London, Paris and Los Angeles – Christian has undergone a series of radical procedures (including moving his eyes and building a nose) as well as operations to create eyelids, to put bone grafts in his mouth to support teeth implants and to prevent urinary reflux (when urine flows back to the kidneys). In 1985, he had surgery at Great Ormond Street to correct his compressed head bones – his brain was growing faster than his skull would allow. Surgeons opened his head from ear-to-ear to release the bones. Shortly afterwards Christian got meningitis and hydrocephalus.

In 1993, Paul Tessier, the “grandfather” of cranio-facial surgery, performed a massive procedure on him in Paris to bring his eyes closer together and lower his eyebrows. Before the operation, Adam overheard Tessier saying to his anaesthetist in French, “We’re entering a patch of fog without a compass.”

“They had to remove the entire bone from my face and reshape it and my brain was ‘shrunk’ to allow more room for the surgeons to work,” says Christian, straightforwardly. “Blindness was a risk, as was exposing my brain after meningitis.” Afterwards, he threw up a lot of blood. “Obviously, I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were stitched together.”

Was this his lowest point? “I’ve often woken up and thought, ‘This is physically unbearable,'” he says. “When I was 19, they had to correct a forehead defect by applying pressure to it. The only way to do this was to staple a bandage onto my head. To remove it, they had to yank it out. Excruciating.” Once he had tissue expanders (which are similar to balloons) placed inside his head and then inflated with water to stretch the tight, scarred skin. “They put water through a needle into a tube inside my head and then the expander got bigger and bigger under the skin. It was agony.” Another time, when the upper lip was being improved, his lips were sewn together for two weeks.

Despite all this, he recalls junior school as a “happy” time. “He was so cute and outgoing when he was little,” remembers Christian’s 21-year-old sister, Isabella. Aged 12, Christian played the lead part in the school play, and loved it. “I was dressed as a woman in a bright red wig and skirt,” he says. And what of unwanted attention? When he was nine, he tells me, the children at a party ran up laughing, “Look at his face, he’s an alien.” Another time a boy taunted, “That must be a mask you’re wearing.” “Once,” says Christian, “somebody was staring so much that he tripped and fell over in the street.”

“His being stared at was the worst thing for me, more upsetting even than sitting in hospital waiting rooms,” says Mina. “It doesn’t matter how educated people are, they can be awful.” In the street, his parents and sister would stand in front of Christian to block him from view. “I’d talk loudly to him,” says Mina, “so people would know that just because he didn’t look right didn’t mean that he couldn’t understand what they were saying about him.” At first, Christian wasn’t aware of the attention. “When I was young, it didn’t affect me that much because being stared at was all I knew,” he says. “But once I got into my teens and went to secondary school, it was terrible.”

Schoolwork was hard because he was off sick so much, sometimes for more than a term at a time. (He scraped through his GCSEs, but failed his A-levels.) And once his adolescent peers started partying and chasing girls, Christian withdrew into himself. His problems were exacerbated by his stunted growth. Aged 13, he wasn’t even 5ft (he’s now 5ft 7in). “By 15,” he says quietly, “I’d lost my confidence. I hated my looks, felt deserted by my friends and avoided social activities.”

He developed feelings for a fellow student. Did he tell her? “Of course not,” he smiles.

“I used to tell myself, ‘Who’d go out with someone as bad-looking as me?’ Then one day some boys started jeering, ‘Who do you think you are? The way you look, you don’t have a hope of

getting a girlfriend, ever.'” He looks down momentarily. “If I saw them today, I’d break their legs.” Did his parents consider therapy for him? “I didn’t tell them what was going on.” Mina nods. “I only heard about a lot of this recently. But anyway there weren’t

support groups that I knew of,” she says, “and he didn’t ever want to be grouped with people just because of having deformities.”

When he was 16, his closest friend since childhood, George, died. “That hit him really badly,” says Mina. “Not least because it shook his faith in medicine. Until then he’d always thought doctors could fix anything.” He started skipping school to drink beer at 11am. “At night, I’d wait until my parents were asleep, then drink a bottle of wine,” Christian says. Depression took hold and he’d sit listlessly in the waiting room on the floor where George’s bedroom had been in the Royal Free Hospital. “I’d go there after midnight and sit there for hours just looking straight ahead.”

“I knew he was devastated about George, all his friends were, but I didn’t realise anything else was going on,” says Mina sadly. “He hid it so well from us.” At his GP’s suggestion, Christian had counselling in 2001. “It wasn’t much help but I never wanted psychiatric care,” he says. “I’m not very open. I don’t talk about my problems.”

His difficulties came to a head when he was studying shipping at Southampton University in 2004. “I’d thought everything would be different there,” says Christian, who took a year out in 2005 to have an operation to lower his eyebrows and hairline. “But after a few weeks, I’d hardly talked to anyone. I’d just go to lectures, then back to my room. I was drinking to escape my problems. I didn’t even dare go to the common room. But I told mum and everyone that I was loving it.”

One evening in October 2004, he walked back from a bar resolved to take his life. Back in his room, he grabbed 20 Panadol Extra. “I didn’t even know if it would be enough to kill me,” he says. “But it wasn’t really a suicide attempt. I didn’t even try.” It was seeing a photograph of his family that stopped him. “That brought me to my senses. Whatever I’d been through, they’d suffered too.” He was hysterical when he rang his Uncle Basil, who calmed him down. “It’s the first I’ve heard of a suicide,” says Mina, with surprising calm. “I think he’s shielded me from lots of things.”

Unsurprisingly, the impact of his disabilities on the family has been great. “I adore him now,” says Isabella. “But for obvious reasons he got most of the attention when we were children. I was very jealous.” Often when the family went to operations, Isabella had to stay with relations.

Adam and Mina’s stable 26-year marriage has inevitably suffered. After giving birth to Isabella in 1987, Mina terminated two further pregnancies for foetal abnormalities similar to Christian’s. In 1988, after her first termination, at 22 weeks, Adam walked out. “Only for a few weeks,” says Mina. “We both wanted another child and were coping with Christian, but another abnormal baby was too much to bear.” She pauses. “I also had a sort of breakdown after my second termination. Things got progressively worse and culminated, finally, in a nasty bout of pneumonia, for which I was hospitalised. I’m sure it was psychosomatic. I always felt that I didn’t have anywhere to go and cry.”

The high financial cost of Christian’s treatment is also clear. Their health insurers, PPP, underwrote most of the early procedures that were carried out in the UK, but the Constantines have had to pay for other operations, plus their worldwide travel and hotel expenses. “We had to. They just wouldn’t have been able to do things like the nasal reconstruction and lowering his eyebrows here,” explains Mina. “They made sacrifices,” adds Christian simply. “But they were always clear that they’d do whatever was best for me, whatever it took. And, frankly, plastic surgeons are light years ahead in the US.”

Christian’s immediate family has been ceaselessly supportive and protective of him. “I think I helped him psychologically with my positivity,” says Mina, who has dedicated her life to making things better for him. “I also taught him to be a bit arrogant, as a defence and protection.” Isabella says she still “babies” her brother and always keeps her eyes and ears open for him, “although he’s more than capable of doing anything himself”. Meanwhile Adam has worked tirelessly, researching the best doctors, paying for and attending operations. (“Adam is intensely private,” adds Mina, “but he’s had his dark moments. Once they stuck a massive skin graft on Christian’s face and it looked like a croissant under his nose. I think that’s when Adam wanted to pitch himself out of the 46th floor of our hotel.”)

Christian also has a close extended family (he has 20 first cousins). “He was treated as normal by them,” says Mina. Many would fly to lend support at operations. (The Constantines travelled 14 times to Chicago in two years, and spent two months in LA at a stretch, for operations.) “Adam’s siblings, their partners, my in-laws, my mum and granny, about 20 of us, went to Paris for Christian’s operation in 1993,” says Mina. “I’ve only ever attended minor operations alone.”

The doctors still have no idea why Christian’s problems occurred. Last year the Constantines saw geneticist Prof Raoul Hennekam at Great Ormond Street. “He’s still researching,” explains Christian. “He says there are only four similar cases in the world.” If the defects appeared in Christian’s children, what would he do? “I’d want to terminate,” he says. “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I can’t imagine anyone else surviving what I’ve been through. I couldn’t let my child go through what I’ve suffered.”

There’s a sense, however, that Christian is coming to accept his lot. Step by step, he’s confronting his problems. He feels he has his drinking more under control. “Sometimes I don’t drink for a week,” he says. “If I drink, I can’t stop. So I have to be careful. I’ve thought of trying AA. I think I’m doing it now because I’m addicted to alcohol rather than to escape problems.”

“He seems to have come to terms with things more,” confirms Mina. His appearance and self-esteem have improved radically. Now, in the rare event that someone stares, he stares right back. He has also made good friends at university. “Not just relations and Greeks!” he laughs. He’s finishing university this year. “For a change, it looks as if I’ll pass my exams.” After graduation, he’s thinking of living in New York. And he hopes one day to marry and have children.

Importantly, his major surgery is now over. “I may do a few more cosmetic things and have an operation to improve my speech.” He pauses. “Some people think I’m obsessed with looking perfect. But if anyone told me I couldn’t ever have another operation, I wouldn’t be terribly upset.” Really? “Honestly. It’s taken me a long time. But now I really do feel that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” Which is someone funny, energetic and resourceful. And, of course, incredibly brave.*

*Some names have been changed.

I’m sitting at a kitchen table in West London’s Notting Hill talking to the two parenting gurus of the moment. Their children – a total of eight between them – are at school, but there are bikes and scooters in the hallway, two fish tanks on a worktop, and the fridge is covered in magnetic letters, like a hundred thousand other family kitchens around the UK. It’s the home of Karen Doherty, and this table is where she and Georgia Coleridge have spent the past five years writing their book Seven Secrets of Successful Parenting.

Karen, 44, and Georgia, 42, became friends through their offspring. ‘We met in the communal garden that our houses both backed on to,’ explains Karen, who has Californian surfer-girl good looks, matching accent and Juicy Couture tracksuit. ‘Our children would run in and out of each other’s houses,’ adds Georgia, more bohemian in her spotty dress and with the face (in the words of her husband) of a prettier Cherie Blair.

Karen is the partner of Peter Doherty, a financier, and mother of three girls and a boy, aged eight, nine, 11 and 13. Georgia is married to Nicholas Coleridge, writer and managing director of Condé Nast, publisher of glossy magazines such as Vogue and Glamour. They have three boys and a girl, aged nine, 12, 15 and 16.

Despite being the kind of groomed, confident women who make mothering look easy, both admit to having felt paralysed with fear when they first became parents, and being tested to the limit by their own children’s antics. ‘My youngest son was the naughtiest in his nursery class,’ says Georgia. ‘He got up to endless mischief with Karen’s son, who was his best friend. And two of I’m our daughters were also partners in crime – at the age of five they escaped on to the street through the garden fence.’ Karen, who is forthright and witty, has an MPhil in management from Oxford and was a producer and journalist for American television before she became a full-time mother. Georgia, an Oxford graduate in politics, philosophy and economics, is children’s book editor of the Daily Mail, a reviewer and a spiritual healer. Tiptop academic, journalistic and caring credentials on both sides – but the idea for their book stemmed from their complete lack of confidence at the thought of bringing up children.

‘When I had my first baby,’ says Karen, ‘I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to cope. I’d never changed a nappy, and I was worried that I’d make mistakes and ruin my relationship with her. But then I saw how well a friend of mine dealt with her son when he was rude to his great-grandmother. If I’d behaved that badly as a kid, I’d have been slapped across the face and reminded for months of my insolence,’ she says. ‘So my friend’s sympathetic approach was a revelation. I realised how much I needed to learn, so I started reading lots of parenting books and signed up for classes.’ Georgia remembers feeling a similar sense of panic and bewilderment. ‘I had intended to be Julie Andrews up a mountain with a guitar and permanently happy children,’ she recalls. ‘So it was a terrible shock when mine argued with me, fought with each other and didn’t do what they were told. Whenever there was any sign of trouble, either I panicked and froze or lost my temper.’ They both attribute their lack of instinctive parenting skills to difficult aspects of their own childhoods.

Karen was raised in California by her father James Weinberg, then a Hollywood lawyer, and mother Patricia, then a nurse turned housewife. Her parents divorced 25 years ago. ‘My mother hated having her authority challenged,’ she explains. ‘Her dogmatic approach worked with my younger brother and sister, but I stood up to her, and she didn’t like it. To her [she’d been brought up by a Christian fundamentalist father] I was the devil child, the root of all evil in the house. She screamed and shouted and meted out physical punishments that would be considered child abuse these days – like hitting me so hard with a wooden spoon that it broke. She just didn’t know how to deal with me.’ Georgia, the elder of two daughters born to George Metcalfe, then a businessman, now a life coach, and his wife Elizabeth, who did charity work, was raised in Fulham, West London, amid gerbils, dachshunds and her mother’s home-made tapestry cushions. ‘My mother would be nice…then even nicer…then when being nice didn’t get through, she’d lose her temper volcanically,’ Georgia recalls.

‘My parents divorced when I was eight and I became like…’ She pauses. ‘Do you remember the boy in The Snow Queen? When the queen’s mirror .. ‘When I had my first baby, I was terrified that I’d make mistakes and wouldn’t be able to cope’ breaks, a shard goes into the little boy’s heart and he can no longer feel proper emotion. I’d been a sunny child until then but I coped badly with the underlying tensions and sadness, and my mother pretending it was all OK. I was fine at school [she won a scholarship to St Paul’s, the top London girls’ school] but at home I froze up and wouldn’t connect with my mother at all. ‘She had had a very difficult childhood too,’ Georgia adds. ‘Her own mother ran off when she was two, and her parents fought a vicious custody battle over her for 16 years. So she’d had poor parenting herself, yet she did her best as a single mother to look after us and hold everything together. But she was suffering, I was suffering and it was all just too painful. When things were at their worst, there was no money because my father’s business had folded and my mother was struggling to keep us all afloat. She couldn’t physically even kiss us goodnight – she just couldn’t touch us because life was too much for her.’ Interestingly, both Georgia and Karen had better relationships with their fathers than their mothers. ‘I told my father everything,’ says Karen.

‘He was the one who helped me sort out boyfriend troubles and took me to buy my first bra. To him I was an angel and he always saw the best in me. He never shouted at me or hit me, and I responded much better to his style of parenting – very gentle, very thoughtful. When I did misbehave, he’d sort it out sympathetically.’ And Georgia? ‘My father was just so cuddly and affectionate, I’ve always got on with him,’ she says. ‘I am so grateful that my mother didn’t repeat the pattern from her own childhood, and fight him for custody. It was a lifeline seeing him at weekends.’ So for both Karen and Georgia, most of their ‘mothering’ came from their fathers. ‘But let’s put this in perspective,’ says Karen. ‘Neither of us had idyllic childhoods, but nor were they terrible. There are plenty of people far worse off.’ And despite their troubled experiences, both of them have gone on to have large families of their own. ‘My relationship with my mother didn’t put me off having children,’ says Karen.

‘And luckily my temperament is very like my father’s. When each baby was born I loved them so passionately I just kept on getting broody. But I knew I’d reached my limit after having four children in five years.’ For Georgia, raised as one of five children from the age of 12 (both her parents remarried so she acquired two half-sisters and a half-brother), large families ? seem normal. ‘I love the different characters and relationships you get in big families,’ she says. Yet both women felt they couldn’t cope with the reality of a sprawling family without additional help. ‘I hired a nanny for a time, because I couldn’t manage a baby, two toddlers and a five-year-old on my own,’ explains Karen, who has no extended family nearby, having moved to the UK 20 years ago when she met her husband and won a place at Oxford. Georgia adds, ‘I had a wonderful lady to help me out. And I was lucky because when Alexander [her oldest child] was born, I went back to the office part time.

Then, as I had more babies, I found I could do large chunks of my job in the middle of the night when the children were asleep. But,’ she adds, ‘I kept thinking, if it’s tough for me, how incredibly hard it must be for other people. Like most parents, I’ve been tired for years and years. That’s why I wanted to find solutions that work for everyone.’ Georgia’s four children are all now at boarding school. Isn’t this surprising in a parenting guru? ‘Yes, I’m frightened people will say, “How can she write about parenting when her own children board?” But the two youngest have only just started, so for 16 years I’ve had children at home full time,’ explains Georgia. ‘I mourned each of my children for a year before they went to school. My husband says boarding days were the happiest of his life, so they wanted to go too. It was a hard decision, but a good one. They love boarding and my relationships with them are still very strong. The only thing we’ve lost,’ she continues, ‘is the fight over homework. I spend tons of time with them in the holidays, see them most weekends, and speak to them up to three times a day. I’m still very physical with them. Even Alexander, my 16-year-old, will sit on my knee and hug me, although he’s taller than me now.’ What, though, makes the duo think they can tell the rest of us how to parent? ‘We can’t,’ responds Georgia. ‘And we don’t want to. I’ve thrown lots of bossy, patronising books, the sort that tell you there’s only one way to do it, in the dustbin.’

Instead, they collected anecdotes and solutions from all sorts of parents – at the school gates, in grocery queues, at parenting classes, even in sandpits. ‘Most of our stories came from mothers,’ says Karen, ‘but as we both had such great fathers we tried to get lots of input from men too.’ Both of them think their own husbands do a fantastic job. ‘Nicholas is a great father,’ enthuses Georgia. ‘He’s very affectionate, cooks them breakfast and stands on the side of a hockey pitch in horizontal rain. He took Alexander and Freddie to Egypt, on his own, when they were five and six. I’m not sure what was more exciting for them – seeing the pyramids, or being allowed Coca-Cola!’ ‘I couldn’t have had so many children if Pete wasn’t such a good father,’ agrees Karen. ‘When they were babies he did endless night shifts, and as they got older he’d take them swimming and cycling. Now he’s always around in the evenings to help with homework, and at the weekends he’s on pancake duty.’ Karen and Georgia’s book distils their findings into seven parenting types and a collection of simple, accessible, easily remembered emotional tools for dealing with everything from getting your child to clean his teeth or turn off the television to picky eaters and bullying.

The idea is that you don’t have to be one sort of parent all the time – you can adapt different approaches to deal with different situations. It’s about finding a style that feels comfortable for you, and works with your children. If your child is persistently naughty, picky about his food or being bullied, for example, you will need to try more than one approach. ‘The more options you’ve got, the easier it is,’ says Karen, ‘but we’re not here to tell you which type of parent to be.’ And which type are they? ‘I’m good on the friendly stuff,’ says Georgia. ‘Like my father I’m a naturally Tuned-In and Cheerleader Parent [see box, above]. But I’ve had to learn ? how to be more authoritative, more of a Commando type, and it has helped a lot.’ ‘I’m naturally a Pause Parent,’ says Karen. ‘When my children started fighting, my mind went blank and often I didn’t know the best thing to do or say. But I found that saying nothing is a lot better than shouting, and once everyone has calmed down, it’s easier to sort things out. I also take after my father as a Tuned-In and Cheerleader Parent.

But I could become more Sorted. It’s a miracle when my children all end up at school with the correct kit on the right day.’ Writing the book has also helped them to resolve childhood issues and their relationships with their own mothers. Georgia had lunch earlier this month with both her parents, in a restaurant in Westminster. ‘By some fluke, Mrs Thatcher was upstairs,’ says Georgia, ‘so everyone was up there gawping and we had the ground floor to ourselves. We spoke about things that we’d avoided for 35 years and had to keep wiping away the tears. My relationship with my mother had been like a raw egg – neither of us had dared tap too hard on the shell in case we found all sorts of raw, runny, scary emotion inside. Now for the first time we were able to tap the egg and talk directly.’ Karen and her mother have also had a reconciliation. ‘I refused to talk to her for years in my teens,’ she says. ‘There was such a wall between us. But we’ve been able to get beyond that now.

She says she regrets all the years we lost. Touchingly, she also says I’m the best parent she’s ever seen and she’s now using our techniques with her grandchildren.’ Their relationship improved when Karen’s children were born. ‘My mother came and helped me, as her mother had helped her. It was the first thing she’d done for me in decades, and I saw a calm, more compassionate side of her.’ There will be no stopping the born-again parents now. They’ve been doing public speaking engagements, have just launched a parenting website, (KarenAndGeorgia.com) intend to run parenting classes and are bringing out a book on siblings next year. ‘The connection with our mothers wasn’t what we’d have wanted and we’ve both tried hard to give our children what we missed,’ concludes Karen. ‘It’s taken a hell of a long time to figure it out and make it simple so it works. Now we just want to help others too.’ And they will. Seven Secrets of Successful Parenting by Karen Doherty and Georgia Coleridge will be published tomorrow by Bantam, price £12.99. To order a copy with free p&p, call the YOU Bookshop on 0845 606 4204 or go to you-bookshop.co.uk

Seven ways to successful parenting

Karen and Georgia have identified seven parenting types, each with their own unique approach to family life. If you have children, you will almost certainly identify with one or more of them, but what can you learn from the other parenting styles?

PAUSE PARENTS give themselves time to think. They stay calm and quiet and don’t overreact in a crisis. If their child is arguing, whingeing or shouting, they realise it doesn’t help to get wound up and sucked into the drama. They know that once everyone has simmered down, everything will become clear. Then they can pick up the pieces, solve the problem, and maybe even stop the same scene playing itself out again in the future.

CHEERLEADER PARENTS focus on their child’s good points and are great at motivating with praise. It’s not that they don’t care if their child misbehaves; they stay positive because they know it gets results and that bad behaviour tends to shrivel up from lack of attention. Often saying something kind is all it takes.

TUNED-IN PARENTS understand the feelings behind their child’s behaviour and try to work out why he is behaving as he is. When their child is behaving badly or being defiant, they assume there’s a good reason for it, even if they don’t know exactly what it is. So before telling him off, they listen. They are brilliant at breaking deadlocks by helping their child deal with difficult feelings.

PHYSICAL PARENTS realise that there don’t always have to be deep psychological reasons for bad behaviour; sometimes children get ratty because they are exhausted, cooped up for too long in front of the television or juddering with sugar. They know that if their child feels well she will usually behave well — that she will be far less grumpy if she isn’t full of junk food, has a run round the park and gets a good night’s sleep. They also know a hug can work miracles.

SORTED PARENTS stay one step ahead of their child. Getting themselves and their children organised removes a whole layer of stress. If children know in advance when the television is going to be switched off or who is going to get the window seat in the car, they are far less likely to argue about it. Being a sorted parent is about seizing the upper hand and refusing to be a victim of fluctuating circumstances.

COMMANDO PARENTS have no-nonsense authority and are good at being in charge. They get things done without shouting, nagging or being bossy and everyone knows where they stand with them. ‘The juice is spilt, we need a cloth’ works much better than ‘You’re so naughty — clean up that mess now!’ LAID-BACK PARENTS manage to chill out and encourage their child to do things himself, rather than controlling every aspect of his life. They trust their children’s judgment and encourage them to develop their independence. Asking a child for solutions gets his brain working and helps him to feel more confident.

As an infant, Anna Rose O’Sullivan had pigeon toes – now she is a pirouetting princess. Caroline Phillips reports

When Anna Rose O’Sullivan was 10 months old, her mother, Jacinta, feared that her daughter might never walk properly. The infant’s feet turned inwards and she walked on her ankles. Jacinta’s mind was filled with visions of splints, braces and corrective shoes. In severe cases of pigeon toes, she discovered later, remedial surgery is required.

This weekend, Anna Rose, now aged 10, will dance the lead role in the London Children’s Ballet revival of A Little Princess – standing on her tip-toes and turning out her feet perfectly for the demanding part of Sara Crewe, a little girl left orphaned, penniless and at the mercy of the wicked Miss Minchin. She dances for most of the 90-minute performance.

“One week, we rehearsed for five hours every day,” says Anna Rose. She has also just taken over as Cosette in the long-running musical Les Miserables.

“It’s quite a big part,” says Anna Rose, proudly.

The sitting room of the O’Sullivans’ modern Uxbridge home is filled with silver ballet trophies.

“Upstairs,” says Anna Rose, “I have 24 ballet medals.”

Pigeon toes – also called in-toeing – occurs when the front of the foot is turned to face the other foot, and – like bowlegs, flat feet or knock-knees – is a common condition in children.

“Pigeon toes is a general term. It’s nearly as unspecific as `backache’,” explains John Strachan, who worked as orthopaedic surgeon to the Royal Ballet for 31 years. “It usually has postural or anatomical roots. For example, if the hip isn’t positioned correctly, the foot will turn in to compensate. The toes themselves aren’t usually deformed. It’s just a description of gait and the position of the feet.”

Rarely, the condition is caused by a twist in the thigh or shin bone, or an abnormal curvature of the foot (metatarsus adductus). In most cases of in-toeing, the problem corrects itself naturally by the time the child reaches school age – which was the case with Anna Rose. As muscles strengthen and the bones grow, they straighten out.

Nobody knows for sure why the condition occurs. One theory is that it is the result of crowding in the uterus. When a baby’s hips, shins or feet are squashed in utero, they may turn in as they develop. This is more likely if the mother is carrying her first child or twins, or has reduced amniotic fluid.

“Anna Rose was a big baby – nine and a half pounds,” says Jacinta.

Generally, in-toeing doesn’t affect athletic ability. But, in serious cases, it can cause a child to trip and fall. In the past, special shoes, splints and leg braces were used, but they are rarely prescribed now, as they have had little effect in speeding up the natural, slow improvement.

Typically, in-toeing appears between the age of a year and 18 months, when the infant begins to stand. Jacinta noticed the problem when Anna Rose started to walk.

“Two of her adult relations suffer from it, on both sides of the family,” she says. “So I was terrified it was going to be a permanent condition.”

“If there’s an anatomical problem, it could be genetically linked, but this is rare,” says Strachan. “For Anna Rose, it sounds more like a coincidence.”

Jacinta took her daughter to the family doctor. There, her fears were dispelled. Anna Rose’s in-toeing wasn’t severe.

“The doctor thought her knee turned in, making her walk like that,” says Jacinta. “He said it might correct itself when she came out of nappies – because wearing them distorts the way you stand. Then, I worried about it cosmetically. It was very unsightly.”

The GP suggested that Anna Rose should wear sturdy boots with ankle support and an arch to strengthen her insteps. He also recommended regular foot massages and advised Jacinta to take her to ballet classes as soon as possible.

“Every time I changed her nappies, I’d massage her feet from inside ankle to toe for a few minutes,” says Jacinta.

Just before Anna Rose’s third birthday, Jacinta started taking her to ballet twice a week.

“Standing in an out position helps strengthen the muscles and makes your feet and legs strong,” says Strachan. “Ballet helps as long as there’s no underlying anatomical problem – which is generally the case. It’s important because the child is doing something enjoyable, but learning to walk with the feet facing out.”

Earlier this year, Jacinta took Anna Rose to a ballet physiotherapist. Ever greater dancing demands are being made of her and Jacinta wanted reassurance that her daughter had no anatomical problems that might one day prevent her from dancing.

The physiotherapist stretched and manipulated her feet at length, then declared her body to be perfect for ballet.

“More than anything,” says Anna Rose, “I want to be a prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet when I grow up.”

A Little Princess is at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells from tonight until Sunday.