Parenting

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

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

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

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

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 They’re an increasingly outdated way of getting things done.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

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

Every now and again I ask my daughter, who is a primary school teacher, if she is free for a curry after work. And almost always she replies that she can’t, as she has a ‘parents’ night’. Now, either she has become lazy in her excuses for not wanting to see me, or her school organises a great number of parents’ nights. Hoping it might be the latter, I consulted a friend called Lucy, a teacher at a primary near Guildford in Surrey. She said it was quite normal to have at least one parents’ night per term, plus two or even three ‘parents’ workshops’. These workshops are dedicated to