Going on holiday with four kids under seven is a nightmare — what do you do in the car?
3 April 2010
Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety
I sometimes worry that by playing these competitive games with my children I am causing them some irreparable psychological harm. How will it affect them as adults? Ludo, in particular, may find the experience of being constantly beaten by his older sister so traumatic that he decides to opt out of the rat race and retire to Totnes to live in a yurt. But I take comfort from the example of Stanley Johnson, father of Boris and Rachel. In Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris, he quotes Stanley’s daughter, Julia, on his parenting technique: ‘As long as I can remember there have been cut-throat meal-time quizzes, fearsome ping-pong matches, height, weight and blondness contests, and, of course, academic rivalry of mind-numbing magnitude.’
If my children turn out to be half as successful as Stanley’s, I’ll be more than happy.
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