Parenting

In defence of modern children’s books

A few years ago, I was surprised to open a newspaper and read that the head teacher of a London public school had decided to ban my books from his library. He described the adventures of Alex Rider, which have sold around 20  million- copies worldwide, in terms so derogatory that I have no mind to repeat them. Suffice it to say that the article quite put me off my cornflakes. But the strange thing was that — once I had got past the sheer offensiveness of his language and a mindset that believed that banning books could ever have good connotations — I was actually quite sympathetic to his wider

In defence of pocket money

Our grandchildren are penniless. They have pretty much everything their hearts desire and they have parents with wallets full of plastic, but they lack the satisfying chink of coins in a jam jar. I was alerted to this state of affairs when one of our tribe turned nine and I asked his mother how much pocket money he was getting. The answer was: nothing. The very words ‘pocket money’ seemed to strike her as quaint. I said: ‘But what if he wants to walk down to the shops to buy a comic?’ The answer was that such a thing was very unlikely to occur to him but, if it did,

It’s possible to talk to children about politics without leading them in one direction

My six-year-old son announced, from the back of the car, that he was backing Boris Johnson. My wife, who’s voting Lib Dem, was horrified, accusing me of indoctrinating the boy; I resisted the temptation to film a video and post it on Twitter, to be retweeted by Tories and hate-tweeted by others accusing me of brain-washing, even child abuse. But when we questioned our son it soon emerged that he had heard — whether from a news report, or from his parents talking — that Boris Johnson was in favour of cake and in favour of eating it, and this was very much a policy he could get behind. It’s

The cult of youth damages everyone

We’ve begun to behave as if young people are special; more virtuous and wiser than adults. It’s wrong and it’s creepy and we’ve got to stop it — not for our sake so much as for theirs. It looked, for a terrible moment this week, as if 16-year-old Greta Thunberg would win the Nobel peace prize. On Thursday, 96 per cent bets placed with William Hill were for Greta. Though in the end, the prize went to Abiy Ahmed, the sheer volume of votes for Greta was proof that even the most sophisticated adults in the world have signed up to the bonkers idea that children can somehow intuit the

At last, the TV-hogging space invaders have returned to university

‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When I tweeted this the other day having just dumped my offspring at Durham I got accused of being a bad father. But I don’t think I am. A bad father wouldn’t have been labouring in the dark at 12.30 a.m. getting the car packed for the long trek north. A bad father wouldn’t have forked out so liberally and uncomplainingly for all those things they spring on you when you arrive — 30-odd quid for the week’s JCR induction entertainments; 25 quid (50 if you’d been naive enough to buy

Like so many parents, I’m a panic junkie

On that record-breaking, sweltering day at the end of July, my three-year-old son did a pirouette in the paddling pool — ‘look at this Mama!’ — then tripped, slid under the surface and lay there on his back staring up at me through two foot of water. I was in the pool too, just an arm’s length away, and it seemed to me that I did nothing for ages. I had time to think: he looks so calm. Why isn’t he moving? And, why am I not moving? Then I had hauled him out and we were spluttering on the grass. When he could speak, Cedd was more proud than

Girl’s gone to Magaluf and it’s hard not to worry

At the Leavers’ Ball held to mark our daughter’s last day at boarding school, there were only two topics of conversation among the anxious parents. How early could we decently slope off without being rebuked by our girls? And the dreaded Leavers’ trip to Magaluf. Magaluf — Shagaluf as the kids all call it — is the post-A-levels destination of choice for what seems like every school leaver in the country. If you’ve seen The Inbetweeners Movie you’ll know what it’s like: charmless, garish avenues of overpriced bars and clubs with pushy greeters, expensive party cruises, grotesque drunkenness, epic hangovers, sunburn, STDs and gallons of vomit. Quite how much Shagaluf

Daddy issues | 13 June 2019

When I was growing up in the late 1960s, boys like me craved the admiration and approval of our dads; we wanted nothing more than to impress them. And now that we are dads, we crave the admiration and approval of our children; we want nothing more than to impress them. But the curious thing is, they don’t care about impressing us. In fact, our teenage children are just like our dads were — distant figures who are busy getting on with their own lives. Today we demonise dads of the recent past for being cold and uncaring. For failing to change nappies, read stories at bedtime, provide the unconditional

Parent trap

The mother of a little girl in my son’s year at school recently committed suicide. On the surface she was a radiant person, smiling and full of light. Devoted to her daughter, successful at work, always good for a laugh at the school gates. No one — save those loved ones who knew her private struggle — saw it coming. For days, waves of confusion and sadness emanated out through our patch of north-west London. This is the way of suicides in social groups. I’ve seen it before. They ripple and reach well beyond where they have any right to. But the peculiar thing about this tragedy was the way

Home truths | 9 May 2019

As any parent of young children will tell you, toddler groups exist as much for the adults as for the kids, and my local meet-up is no exception. We knock back coffee and compete to see who has had the least sleep while the children run riot on trikes. The small talk always winds its way round to nursery: which ones are good, which ones are near work, how much they charge per hour. You’d be forgiven for wondering why any of us chose to have children, such is the zeal with which we plot our escape. ‘They just installed CCTV,’ enthused one mother to me recently. ‘So I’ll be

The end is in sight

Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to be held up as a git. The series, billed as ‘a radical experiment in social mobility’, gets a group of seven- and eight-year-old children from different backgrounds to work together in a real-life office setting — which in Thursday’s first episode was, rather unexpectedly, Hello! magazine. The editor-in-chief Rosie Nixon began by announcing, in the tones of one making a brave stance against prevailing social attitudes: ‘I do feel passionately about diversity.’ And this, of course, was also the brave stance taken by the programme itself and its on-hand experts,

Off the agenda

God save us from committees. They’re an increasingly outdated way of getting things done. But there’s a certain sort of person who loves them. What’s worse, they want you to love them too. Anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes as the parent of a school-age child will be familiar with the emails. ‘Joyce has now served as treasurer of the committee for seven consecutive years, and really does want a break. Please can someone volunteer to take over? It’ll only take a few hours of your time each month — and it can be great fun!’ Yeah, right. Then comes the emotional blackmail. ‘I’m sure your child loves

Dear Mary | 14 February 2019

Q. I have learned through a third party that a friend, who is feeling particularly insecure these days, has not been invited to the forthcoming book launch of one of our long-standing mutual friends. I don’t want to portray him as some kind of victim, but is there a way I can tactfully find out if, best-case scenario, his failure to receive an e-invitation was, as it so often is, a mistake by the publishers’ intern? Or if, worst-case scenario, he has been ruthlessly excluded on financial grounds for no longer being an ‘influencer’? This author is paying for his launch himself and it is in a private house. — Name and

Problem children

There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They packed them off to boarding school as soon as possible and banned them from the dinner table as soon as they got back. Why-oh-why, they asked, can’t the English just relax and enjoy the presence of children like the French did? Well, they’ve got their wish. That old, much-mocked Victorian proverb — children should be seen and not heard — has been replaced by a new dictum in child-centric Britain: children must be seen, heard, celebrated, praised and obeyed all of the time. Once children were expected to fit themselves

This junk study proves nothing about helicopter parenting

An academic paper by a group of child psychologists caused a stir earlier this week. ‘Helicopter parenting is bad for children,’ was how the Times reported it, and other news outlets summarised it in the same way. Here was proof, apparently, that wrapping your children in cotton wool and limiting their exposure to risk is bad for their emotional development and can lead to problems at school, as well as difficulties in later life. A few years ago, when I was in the first flush of fatherhood, I would have leapt on this study as confirmation that my laissez-faire attitude to parenting was more effective than the more hands-on approach

Join the club

I’m bored.’ ‘Read a book.’ This sequence more or less summarises my childhood (along with ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘Eat some fruit.’) At the time, such instruction was loathsome and it never ceased to amaze me that the grown-ups didn’t seem to grasp the fact that I had obviously considered, and rejected, the idea of picking up a book. They never appeared to be sympathetic to my boredom, in spite of my heartiest attempts to reflect the ennui that was oozing from my every pore. In fact, boredom was positively encouraged by our parents — it was the mother of invention. Those were the days. For many of today’s parents, boredom is

Why pay for the privilege?

In downstairs loos of houses of a certain sort, the old school photograph is a constant. When you’ve seen a few of these slightly yellowing portraits, you’ve seen them all. But this trend might soon reach its end. If you listen carefully in particular enclaves, you’ll hear faint whisperings about a new way of doing things. Maybe, just maybe, public school isn’t quite for everyone any more. Say goodbye to the old school pictures; the toffs are going native. Last year, in a Viscount’s kitchen, I spotted an invitation to a school fair — at the local primary. A few weeks later, an Old Harrovian whose family has a 300-year

Dear Mary | 17 August 2017

Q. Mary, I am what you would probably call a Sloane Ranger. I have great numbers of close friends and I’ve always attended confirmations, weddings, christenings and funerals without even thinking about whether it was convenient. But at my age a lot of friends’ parents are going downhill fast, and I now work. Many funerals will be out of London and require a whole day off to attend. I just can’t do it every week but neither can I let down my close friends. — S.C., London SW11 A. You won’t be the only person who is needed at work and can’t be in two places at once. But you

Dear Mary | 27 July 2017

Q. My children are very lucky in that we have bought them all flats. However, they are now renting out these properties with Airbnb, then coming to stay with us at home, just when we thought they had flown the nest. They are more than welcome at weekends but during the week my ancient husband and I like to have a quiet time. How can we put a stop to this without our much-loved children (all in their thirties) feeling that they are unwelcome in their ‘own’ home? — Name and address withheld A. Their entitlement syndrome is certainly a tribute to your parenting, but for their sake you must

Do parents really matter?

Parenting does not have a large impact on how children turn out. An incendiary claim, to be sure, but if you can bear with me until the close of this article I think I might be able to persuade you — or at the very least chip away at your certainty about parental influence. First, what if later today the phone were to ring and the voice at the other end informed you that you have an identical twin. You would have lived your entire life up to that point not realising that you had a clone. The bearer of this news says arrangements have been made to reunite you