SusanGaszczak

Yesterday I attended the East of England Regional Conference with my youngest daughter Rachel, age 4. I was worried about the reaction she would get and really I need not have. She really enjoyed the day.

Many people wanted to talk to her, but of course she was incredibly shy, even with the people she sees on a weekly basis. That was until Steve Webb impressed her, and me, with his knowledge of High School Musical and his ability to miscount up to four. Thanks Steve!

After that she really started interacting with many of the adults and had the confidence to go out into the school grounds and run around in the sunshine.

She did however get some strange looks when I took her into the main conference hall rather than just the fringe. I was summating on Rural Poverty motion and really needed to hear the speeches I was about to comment on.

She was very well behaved, apart from kicking the empty seat in front of her and enjoyed playing with her Libby bear (Paul Clark, regional chair bought her a Lib Dem teddy J ). She did not shout out ‘That's my mummy' when I got up to speak but took some of the best photos I have seen using a colleague's camera.

My question is though - should we be bringing our children more often to these events? Allowing them to build up a network of friends within the party? Often one parent stays home with the children or they get farmed out to friends and relatives.