City kids: what they might lose and what they can gain

My three children - one girl, 12, and twin boys, nine - were all born in Hong Kong. The ubiquitous sound of construction work and the sight of high-rise buildings are as commonplace to them as open spaces and two-storey buildings were to me growing up in England.

As a child, I remember playing outside in the back garden behind the house after school and at weekends. As my father was good at carpentry, we were fortunate to have a Wendy house. My grandparents had a large garden, so during the summer my sister and I could play on the swing and I was even allocated a small plot to try my hand at gardening. Alas, despite my best efforts I never inherited my father's gardening skills.

Bringing up three young and energetic children in North Point has its challenges. So often, I wish I could open the door and let them loose in the garden, to reduce the noise level in the flat and let them run off a bit of their energy.

We live near a small playground and Victoria Park, where they can run around at least a bit, but not as much as I would like. There are so many restrictions - no ball games, no bicycles - so what are older children, who have outgrown the playground, supposed to do? Take a stroll, presumably. Parks in Hong Kong are designed to be looked at, not played in.

During trips to England when the children were younger, I was surprised by what they found fascinating and new. The stairs in a two-storey house, for instance. I remember spending several hours sitting on the stairs with a cup of tea watching my children climbing up the stairs then sliding down on their bottoms. For them, going "upstairs" to bed was a new concept. They were a little unsettled at first; maybe to them it was like going to bed in a whole different house.

Walking around an area with rows of two-storey houses which all look virtually the same was another thing for them to get used to, as well as all the open spaces. I always joke that whenever we go to Britain and Ireland, where my husband is from, the children get agoraphobic.