A TV advert punctuating prime time viewing spells out the tensions and challenges of holiday travelling with three small children.

It invokes the same chorus every time in our house: “It’s not compulsory. Stay at home for everyone’s sake.”

Parents who choose to fly with three children under six are doing just that – choosing stress, discomfort, difficulty and crowd control.

They’re actively choosing an option of zero relaxation; risking provoking the obvious displeasure of others and are doing their children no favours.

Children under six don’t give a damn if they’re in Bali or Barry Island.

Holiday booking season is upon us.

Like childbirth, the pain and exhaustion of the last holiday with small children is too easily forgotten, then planned all over again with the same terrible outcome, apart from a higher bill.

It’s time for some honesty. There is no, and can never be, any resemblance of a holiday with toddlers and babies – or any multiples of children under six.

As another mother once superbly described it – it’s like being at home in a heatwave, only worse.

Taking tiny children to sweltering foreign climes is self-imposed torture.

Clap trap about exposing children to different cultures is twaddle. Small children have no memory and parents come back frazzled swearing never again, until the next year.

Those who persist with their holiday – because, really, it’s all about the adults having their getaway – expect special treatment as poor- hard-done-by ‘we’re travelling with children’ victims.

We’ve all seen them. Boarding flights overladen with kids’ equipment, toys and novelty suitcases, huffing and puffing on to planes expecting everyone else to step aside and give them priority of passage, seat, loo queue and everything else.

Cabin crew call these entitled parents Mary and Josephs - parents who act like they are the first people on the planet to have children.

Their bugbear is that these parents never book specific seats but expect lone passengers, almost always female, to move seats – even if they have booked their seats – so the family can sit together.

Why should their lack of planning become someone else’s guilt trip?

Here’s the thing. Having children, particularly very small children, means life must be adapted to their level. And it’s a parent’s job to contain, entertain and manage their needs.

Last year a mother sparked a lively debate by saying what going on holiday with children under five was always horrid and far too stressful, exhausting, tense for everyone involved and constantly on behaviour watch.

The stress of keeping children under control in restaurants is shattering. Relax and they ruin it for others

Situations get fraught, parents end up bickering, kids fight, irritate and taunt each other and parents are run ragged. A holiday?

Seeing life through a child’s eyes for at least the first few years of its life makes happier all round.

There are years for ahead for holidays. Save your money and make life easier.

Sharenting – sharing photos of children on Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok – could be banned in France to protect children’s privacy when their parents are failing to keep them safe online.

They call it digital violence.

How have we come to a point when child protection laws are needed when babies and small children are paraded on social media by so-called influencers to make money, when those images easily accessible by the worst of humankind for revolting purposes.

Children plastered across social media by cash-hungry parents has always concerned me. The French parliament’s proposed legislation to stop parents sharing photos of their children feels like vital protection.

Parents choose to over-share and live online in a world of posing and posting for profit. Children don’t. Once shared, these photos lose any ownership,

It gives me the shivers that typing "child" or “#MumTok” on social media platforms takes anyone to endless posts of parents sharing videos and photos of their children. 

Are these parents aware of the risks?

It’s vital to protect under-age children who have no voice to speak against the images shared online by their parents.

The proposed law looks to punish influencer parents who seek to gain followers and earn money by posting images of their children. There are plenty of those. 

Under extreme cases, a family judge could strip parents of their authority in terms of image rights “if the dissemination of the child’s image by both parents seriously affects the child’s dignity or moral integrity.”

At last, the voice of the child is being heard in the sewer of social media.

Sexual harassment is sadly not surprising

Sadly, Norfolk police officer Sam Hawkins’ experiences of sexual harassment as a young officer in the 1990s under the banner of “banter” came as no surprise.

Sam, a sergeant and one of the first part-time officers promoted to inspector, said sexual assault was “rife” in her early days with male colleagues sticking their hands up her skirt, leaving condoms containing hole punch clippings in her pocket, and inappropriate stickers being left on her locker. 

Gradually lids are being lifted on what has festered in forces as the inquiries into known behaviour of Wayne Couzens and David Carrick went unchallenged.

Anyone who shrugs off Sam’s account with “that’s how it was in those days” needs to have a serious talk with themselves.