What’s the secret of successful parenting? Like most middle-class parents, I don’t just want my children to be happy. I want them to have proper careers as well. I’d like each of them to go to a Russell Group university — ideally Oxford or Cambridge — and then do a further degree. If they win a scholarship to do postgraduate work at Harvard or Yale, so much the better. And I want them to achieve all this without spending a penny on their education.
The only parenting guide I’ve ever read is Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris Johnson. You won’t find it in the ‘Parenting’ section of Waterstone’s, but it’s a font of useful information nevertheless. After all, Boris’s father Stanley has sired six children, all of whom got into Oxford. Not only that, but all the Johnson children are astonishingly successful. What’s his secret?
Stanley emerges from the book as a British version of Joe Kennedy. Like Joe, he constantly exhorted his children to pit themselves against each other, devising an inexhaustible series of competitive games. In the process, he transformed them from happy-go-lucky tykes to ruthless go-getters. Here’s Julia Johnson’s account of her father’s parenting technique: ‘My father has six children, of which I am the last but one, and as long as I can remember there have been cutthroat mealtime quizzes, fearsome ping-pong matches, height, weight and blondness contests, and, of course, academic rivalry of mind-numbing magnitude.’
Some people might shiver at the prospect of being brought up this way, but I have done my best to duplicate Stanley’s approach. Any number of routine chores have been tricked up into cutthroat competitions, including getting dressed in the morning, finishing your greens and fastening your seatbelt. Incidentally, no car journey is complete without a game of I-Spy or Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, with a prize for the child who accumulates the most points.
I regret to say my children don’t seem to be responding in the same manner as the Johnson siblings. Yesterday, for instance, I took all four to Burger King and no sooner had I placed their Happy Meals in front of them than they began to engage in a who’s-got-the-biggest-chip competition. This was quickly followed by a contest to see who had the smallest chip and, after that, who had the most chips stuck together. I haven’t perfected the system of punishments and rewards, either. My smallest child turned out to have the biggest chip — a clear winner — at which point the biggest child ate it.
The visit to Burger King was on the way back from Port Eliot, the second literary festival I’ve taken them to this year. I had hoped that all this exposure to books and their authors would lead to some intellectual ambition, but there’s no evidence of that. On the contrary, they spent almost the entire time at Port Eliot trooping back and forth to a makeshift shop called Asbo that sold lollipops for 10p.
All the Johnson children went to top fee-paying schools and perhaps that’s the difference. At the age of seven, Boris was being taught about the Peloponnesian War, whereas my seven-year-old is learning about Mary Seacole. Having said that, I was educated in the state sector and managed to achieve all the benchmarks I cited in my opening paragraph, so it’s clearly possible. Should I be looking at my own father’s parenting philosophy instead of Stanley’s?
My dad enjoyed competitive games, but I rarely got to play any since he was always in his office working on one of the 50 or so institutions he dreamt up. His approach to his children was one of benign neglect. He took no interest in my education until I failed all my O-levels, at which point he decided to teach me some rudimentary grammar. I only got into Oxford after being sent an acceptance letter by mistake.
I think in large part my drive stems from this neglect. I want the world to notice me because my father didn’t, at least not during my formative years. His own ambition probably had the same origin, he having been ignored by his own father, and it’s partly out of a desire to break this cycle that I’m a more conscientious parent — not much, but a little. I daresay in ten years time when the only competition my children are interested in is the speed with which they can hotwire a car, I’ll settle for them just staying out of jail and forget about the glittering prizes.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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