Children parenting and family life

JUDGING by his presence in both the England and Man City teams, footballer Kyle Walker’s sporting brain appears to be in full working order.But when it comes to emotional intelligence, he’s clearly cerebrally challenged.
Kyle Walker is clearly cerebrally challenged in the emotional department, with five (apparently soon to be six) children by two different womenCredit: Getty
How else has he ended up with five children by two different women, both of whom are furious with him?
Stage left is his wife Annie, mother of three of his children and, according to The Sun yesterday, now pregnant with their fourth.
Stage right is “lover” Lauryn Goodman, who recently revealed that not only was her three-year-old son fathered by Kyle, but her baby daughter, too.
And centre stage is Kyle, who is known for his “pace, strength and vision” on the pitch but, off it, was seemingly as blind as a bat to the emotional perils that lay ahead because he couldn’t keep it in his trousers.
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Reality star Lauryn, 32, says: “I kept saying to Kyle . . . ‘You need to tell her’ . . . If everyone knows where they stand they can make their own adult choices in life.
“There were hearings coming up surrounding our daughter, there was paperwork flying around and legal meetings had taken place, and Annie needed to know the truth before something went public.”
But Kyle did nothing and failed to anticipate what any adulterous schmuck knows — that Christmas is a potential flashpoint when you’re playing away.
Particularly when your lover is facing the festive season as a single parent while her “baby daddy” is off playing happy families with his wife and other children.
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Lauryn explains that, following a legal meeting in December, “it came to a head” and she realised he was playing her and Annie off against each other.
So, the day after Boxing Day, while Kyle was, er, playing away at Everton, she lobbed her emotional hand grenade into the cosy, post-Christmas idyll of Chez Walker and made a call to Annie.
“She kept asking for proof, so I showed her the DNA test . . . she was trying to piece it all together . . . how he did it,” says Lauryn.
To add insult to injury, she reveals that Kyle would regularly call her from the England dressing room and . . . “I wasn’t a secret to his England teammates — they would come on the phone when he FaceTimed me.”
Very classy, chaps. Annie has now announced she is separating from Kyle after 12 years together (two of them married) and Kyle has publicly apologised to her for “the upset I’ve caused”, as though he’d simply caused a scene in a restaurant rather than fathered two secret children by another woman.
Annie deserves better and I hope she eventually finds someone who treats her respectfully, but if she is pregnant again, her emotions will be raging and make it harder to see a future without the father of her children. So watch this space.
In the meantime, Kyle needs to take a long, hard look at himself and grow the hell up.
When it comes to women, life as a Premier League footballer is akin to being a kid in a sweetie shop.
If you’re a single, teenage star, it’s perhaps understandable that you take your pick, but even an 18/19-year-old knows that, whatever contraception the woman says she’s using, the use of a condom is an extra layer of protection if you don’t want an unplanned baby and years of legal wrangling.
Kyle is 33, for God’s sake. So perhaps it’s time for this man-child to take note of the example given by his 30-year-old teammate and England captain Harry Kane, whose longevity in the game is undoubtedly bolstered by his loyalty to his wife and children and the subsequent lack of drama in his personal life.
Ditto his England manager Gareth Southgate, who has been happily married for 26 years.
In June 2018, the manager warned his ­players about cheating in a meeting before a 2-1 victory over Nigeria at Wembley.
“It’s not that we are looking to get away with anything, but if we thought we could then that option has gone.
“We have to be vigilant in all areas of the pitch.”
He was talking about football, of course. But, in Kyle’s case, it’s sound life advice, too.
Kyle should look to the good example that Harry Kane has setCredit: Getty
GIVE US POWER TO ACT
WHEN we speak of an “institution” and its failings, it’s easy to forget that it’s inanimate.
It’s only as good, or not, as the people working within it.
The jury’s still out on whether Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw was useless or ruthless after he as accused of behaving like a ‘Mafia gangster’Credit: postofficehorizoninquiry
Some of its staff can make it efficient and fair, others can make it sluggish and incompetent, while the worst people of all can make it corrupt.
And the sheer size of certain institutions means there are plenty of hiding places for these human failings committed, often wilfully, by people who, as long as their lives are cushioned by job security, sick pay and a fat pension etc, don’t give a flying fig about the havoc they wreak on others.
The jury’s out on whether Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw was useless or ruthless, but at the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, he and his colleagues were accused of behaving “like Mafia gangsters” towards the postmasters wrongly accused of taking money.
The gimlet-eyed Mr Bradshaw denies it, but he allegedly “hounded” one woman in more than 60 calls and called her a “bitch” in “extremely distressing” conversations.
Surely it’s time for MPs – the cogs of that other inanimate body known as “Parliament” – to give ordinary people the power and resources to robustly defend themselves against these “institutional failings”?

Seems like the kids’ summer commitments mysteriously vaporise if you suggest going to enjoy cocktails with them on a tropical beachCredit: Getty
“BOOMERANG tourism” is reportedly a big thing for 2024 – with millennial adult children planning to rejoin their parents for holidays.
Hmmm. Ask your kids, “Are you free in the summer?” and chances are you’ll get: “Not sure yet. What are you planning?”
If you say, “a week’s camping in the UK” then they’re busy.
But if you mention a tropical beach and cocktails, their commitments mysteriously vaporise.
Luck of the drawers, Geri
GERI Horner says she nearly missed out on early auditions for the Spice Girls after getting bad sunburn on holiday and a face full of blisters.
But she adds: “I’ve always been a queue-jumper.”
Geri Horner has revealed that her little hotpants were her key to stardomCredit: Getty
So she called up the producers, who agreed to see her and, despite not being a trained singer or dancer, she says she “made up for it in enthusiasm”.
Good for her. But one imagines there were plenty of other enthusiastic souls warbling and hoofing their way to wannabe stardom, too, so why did she make the cut?
She adds that she was “quite quirky, in my little hotpants”.
Mystery solved.
TIP’S A CHOC SHOCK
HAVING just spent a few days in New York, I was shocked by the level of tipping expected.
It’s a form of legalised mugging.
Tipping culture in New York is a form of legalised muggingCredit: Getty
Even if you buy an orange juice “to go”, you’re handed a contactless machine that gives the minimum option of a 20 per cent sweetener to the till operator on top of the extortionate mark-up you’re already paying.
Gulp.
But the moment that rendered me utterly speechless was when I used a self-service checkout to buy a chocolate bar at Newark Airport, and even the machine asked me if I would like to leave it a tip.
I told it not to bet on Chelsea winning the Premier League.
WAHEY TO GO, GUYS
A FAN of Morecambe and Wise lost his job at a bus company after managers failed to see the funny side when he and a colleague replicated the comedy duo’s famous kitchen “striptease”.
It was meant as a “jovial Christmas act”, but he was sacked for “gross misconduct” and has subsequently taken CE Jeatt & Sons of Windsor to tribunal and won more than £50,000 in compensation for wrongful dismissal.
A Morecambe and Wise fan has received compensation for wrongful dismissal after a bus company wasn’t fond of him recreating their ‘striptease’Credit: Scope Features
Quite right, too.
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Who are these killjoys who suck all the fun out of life?
They clearly didn’t get the M&W memo: “In this world where we live, there should be more happiness.” More