‘Hyper-parenting’ may be bad — but look what happened when I tried the alternative
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a Father’s Day piece that described a typical Sunday in my life. Essentially, it involved being an indentured slave to my four young children. Several people pointed out that I was guilty of ‘helicopter parenting’ — an American term for supervising your children’s lives too closely — and recommended a book on the subject by Carl Honoré, a Canadian intellectual.
I was a bit suspicious because Honoré is one of the leading advocates of the Slow Movement, but Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is quite convincing. According to Honoré, we have entered the age of the ‘managed child’ in which middle-class parents spend too much time meddling in their children’s lives. ‘The average distance from home British kids are permitted to wander by themselves has fallen nearly 90 per cent since the 1970s,’ he points out. He believes children would be much better off if left to their own devices.
One passage in particular jumps out. Honoré is suspicious of the view that parents should try and build up their kids’ ‘self-esteem’. The practice of heaping praise on children for accomplishing something a chimpanzee could manage is completely wrong-headed. ‘Every doodle ends up on the fridge door,’ he writes.
Too right, I thought. Scarcely a day passes in our household without a child returning from school with a satchel full of drawings and Caroline is constantly scolding me for not taking enough interest in them. Indeed, the entire ground floor of our house has been converted into an exhibition space, with various daubs and scribbles being given pride of place as if they were the work of major artists. We’re currently ‘showing’ the work of Ludo, our four-year-old, who is at the height of his ‘robot period’.
I have long suspected that such over-indulgence is bad for a child’s development and, after reading what Carl Honoré had to say, I took down all Ludo’s pictures and threw them in the bin. The following morning it was my turn to make breakfast and the first child down the stairs was Sasha, Ludo’s five-year-old sister.
‘What happened to Ludo’s pictures?’ she asked.
‘Er, the rubbish men took them,’ I said. ‘Probably best not to say anything. With a bit of luck he won’t notice.’ Needless to say, the moment Ludo appeared she drew attention to the space where his pictures had been. ‘Apparently, the rubbish men took them,’ she said, injecting a note of scepticism into her voice. Ludo shot an accusatory glance in my direction and all I could do was confirm the truth of Sasha’s explanation. He immediately burst into tears. That wasn’t the end of it. During the school run, the eagle-eyed Sasha spotted a rubbish lorry down a side street. ‘Look, Ludo, it’s the rubbish men,’ she said. ‘They’ve got your pictures.’
She then suggested I make a U-turn and retrieve them and, when I muttered something about being late for school, became very indignant on Ludo’s behalf. Sure enough, Ludo had a full-blown tantrum, bucking back and forth in his car seat like a mental patient trying to free himself from a straitjacket.
Later, when Sasha and I were alone, I made her promise not to mention the pictures again — and she didn’t, at least not directly. The next time we pulled up behind a rubbish lorry she said, ‘Look, Ludo, it’s the — oh, sorry, I’m not supposed to say anything.’ She then clamped both hands over her mouth as if she’d made some terrible slip-up. When Ludo gave her a baffled look, she started nodding very pointedly in the direction of the lorry. Eventually, the penny dropped and it was tears before bedtime.
I do not blame Carl Honoré for this catastrophe. Where I went wrong was in trying to apply the lessons of his book to one child after I had already indulged another. The problem with hyper-parenting is that once you have over-managed your eldest child it seems unfair not to lavish the same attention on the younger ones. This is particularly true if your eldest has a Goebbels-like mastery of psychological warfare. Luckily, Ludo brought home another batch of doodles about a week later and they went straight up on the fridge door. So far, I’ve managed to keep the rubbish men at bay.
Comments