The average European child spends 3-4 hours online every day. That also means that our children, kept in check by their parents, who spend 1-1.5 hours a day online, balance out their peers who spend 6-8 hours a day online.

We gave into the social pressure and the demands of online schoolwork: at the age of 12, our kids got their own phones. Well, not iPhones, nor smartphones... but "dumbphones". You know, the ones with buttons.

Ever had a Monday morning when you didn't feel like getting up? When you open your eyes and you know that in the next hour or so you have to somehow wake up the kids, prepare their snacks, and check that they're packed.

The end of summer is finally here! No more heat, no more money-killing camp and holiday spending, children back in the institutional education system. Hooray! Or not so hooray?

Sometimes we read a sentence somewhere that sticks in our memory. I experienced this, for example, some time ago when reading an interview with Mirjam Bikker, at the time just elected leader of the Dutch Christian Union party. It was published months ago, but the last question of the interview is still clear in my mind: "Suppose girls at Christian schools will soon say: Mirjam Bikker is a true role model for me..."

Once, I studied abroad for a year . During that time, I joined a church choir. We sang songs of all times and places, and thus, we also did a Gregorian hymn: "Victimae paschali laudes."

It's just a small news item in the paper: Marie Kondo, the Japanese bestselling author who taught the whole world to declutter, has now given up on the ideal of a tidy home herself.

Summer holidays have arrived! I remember how excited I was as a child when it was that time of the year again. Six long weeks, plenty of time to do whatever you wanted and without any obligations. Well, tidying your room, perhaps, but that was still manageable.

Reinout has recently started cycling - without training wheels! Tirelessly, he rides his laps around the small car park opposite our house. But one day, when I want to call him for dinner, I find out he hasn't taken the bike, but the go-kart, complete with a trailer.

In our church library, a separate shelf has been set aside for books by forgotten authors. To my surprise, I find a book in this very cupboard with Chinese characters on its cover. Curious, I pick it up.