Ivan Yates and the family several years ago. Ivan and Deirdre have four children : Andrew, Ciara, Sarah and John.
“There were aspects of parenting that my father did that I fundamentally disagreed with, that I was determined if I was a father, not to do. He sent me to another boarding school, before St Columba’s, at the age of eight, which was a huge mistake. I was completely out of my depth. I was the youngest person in the school. I didn’t get home very often. I felt totally isolated. I wet the bed.
“My number one priority was to make them independent. Boarding school was part of that,” he says, in spite of his own unhappiness there in his younger years. “It’s not that I didn’t like boarding school – I didn’t like boarding school at eight, when I was completely incapable of coping with it. Yates, who has a phobia of flying, is very grateful to have his children living relatively close to him, even those in the UK. “The saddest things I see, other than a bereavement, is emigration to Australia where it’s so far away.”
His children were between two and seven at the time. “I was sent to a GP who diagnosed that I was suffering from mental exhaustion, who put me on medication and got me right, antidepressants.
Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)