A Spoonful of Sugar

Old-fashioned wisdom for modern-day mothers

LIZ FRASER

For Granny, with love.

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Introduction

Meet Granny … and what you’re in for

Chapter One: CHILDHOOD

The very basics

The big rush

The curse of worrying

When push comes to shove

Playing by the rules

Letting kids be kids

Chapter Two: HOME SWEET HOME

Household chores

Routine, routine, routine

Illness

Health scares

The great outdoors

Chapter Three: EAT YOUR GREENS

We really are what we eat

The good news

Buying local

The bad news

Strike a balance

Cooking from scratch

Spilling the beans – was it really all home made back then?

(Don’t) supersize them

Chapter Four: PLEASE MAY I GET DOWN?

Animals feed, humans dine. Which are you?

Once upon a breakfast time

Lunchtime, what time?

The evening meal – nervous breakdown anyone?

Getting bums on seats

Who’s at the table?

Eliminating fussy eaters

And you’re not getting down till you’re finished

And for desert: a serving of realism

Chapter Five: BECAUSE I SAY SO

The importance of discipline: at home

Drawing the line

Discipline: where are we now?

Crime and punishment. What to do when they cross the line

Smacking. Oh, here we go

It stands to reason … or does it?

Out of sight, out of order

Another challenge for parents

Chapter Six: RESPECTFULLY YOURS

Where are we now?

How has it got this way?

Generation ME

Manners

Thinking of others: spending time with the Real People

Coming right back at you, Mum

The drinking culture, family and behaviour

How to bring back a little respect

Chapter Seven: DRESSING UP

You’re not going out dressed like that!

Fashionista, baby

Money, money, money

I see, therefore I want

Sexy baby. Ummm, isn’t that exactly the problem …?

Role models

Mummy, I want to look just like everyone else

Chapter Eight: SCHOOL TIME

A is for Attitude

B is for Brains

C is for Computers and stuff

D is for Do It Yourself

SILENCE!

Classroom chaos

Getting tough on unruly kids

Cyber bullying

So what can be done?

Oh, litigation’s what you (don’t) need

Solution 1:throwing out the rule book

Solution 2:on the home front

Chapter Nine: ’TIS WISE TO BE THRIFTY

The curse of consumerism, and how to escape it

‘The price of everything – and the value of nothing’

Yes, it’s credit crunch time

Pester power

Playing ‘green’

Birthday parties – Noooooooo!

Reversing the trend

Pocket money

Chapter Ten: … AND DON’T COME BACK TILL TEATIME

A train ride

Kids in the community

My mum is a control freak!

Community parenting

Fear of other people

A new kind of risk: the internet

Abductions and sexual assaults: the facts

What’s a parent to do?

Chapter Eleven: OH I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE …

Family holidays

Searching for that missing ‘something’

Everything but the kitchen sink

But there’s a whole world out there!

Holiday clubs – love ’em or hate ’em?

Chapter Twelve: MOVING WITH THE TIMES

The ups and downs of the modern world

But everyone else does!

Conclusion

Final Note

Acknowledgements

Permissions

Index

About The Author

By The Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Liz Fraser, aged three

Author’s Note

This book won’t make you or your children perfect. It won’t solve all the problems of parenting; it won’t stop kids writing ‘Suzy has big nokkers’ on bus stops or flicking snot into the freezer compartments in Tesco’s. It won’t answer all of your parenting prayers or make your husband’s tongue more agile. Sorry, but it really won’t.

What it will do is offer a whole host of practical, simple, common-sense solutions to many of the dilemmas faced by all those of us who, despite trying really jolly hard indeed to raise decent citizens of this world, feel we might just be making a dog’s dinner out of it.

Those of us who feel hemmed in by public opinion, government legislation, rules and regulations, by the pace and stress of modern life, technology and consumerism. Those who have had enough of the Negotiation Generation, of the early sexualisation of our daughters, the cotton-wool parenting of our sons, the loss of respect and manners, of not feeling that we can parent our own kids: who feel something precious has been lost and who are equally worried and saddened by what is happening to the people we love the most. In short, those of us who want our children to be allowed to be children again.

What I hope is that this book can make the experience of childhood better for thousands of children growing up in this country today, while making the job of parenting them a good deal easier and more enjoyable for you.

Sometimes you need to look back in order to go forward. Talking to my grandmother – and thereby to a whole generation of parents gone by – has been the most eye-opening and helpful experience I’ve ever had where child-rearing is concerned. I just hope we can pass some of our combined experience and knowledge on to you, too.

Take your pick and see what works for you. Children are only young once and they are our future – so listen to those who have done it before, and then give it your best shot!

Liz and her Granny, 2008

Introduction

One late-August day, I receive a phone call from my Granny: she has recently had an operation to improve the feeble circulation in her leg and foot, and, although she is trying to sound upbeat about it, she is clearly very under the weather, in pain and unusually weak. I decide immediately that a spirit-lifting visit is required, so a week later I, my husband and our three children all pile into the car for a 480-mile drive to the highest inhabited village in the remote Scottish highlands, which Granny calls Home and I call Far Too Bloody Far Away.

As we squash our bottoms into cellulite pancakes all the way up the M6 and beyond, I am more anxious than ever to get there and with every passing motorway service station I have a growing regretful, guilty, wretched feeling that I should have spent more time visiting her in the past. Like most pissed twenty-somethings and self-obsessed thirty-somethings I have been too selfish to make time to visit her; to connect with someone who, suddenly in light of her illness, seems such a vital connection to my children: through her, through my dad and then through me.

As the car hugs the last few miles of mountainous road, my daughter vomits into a carrier bag for the third time and Granny’s village twinkles into view at the end of the final valley, I sense that this visit is going to make quite some impact on my life.

I just don’t know yet that it’s going to fundamentally change how I raise my children, and how I feel as a parent.

Meet Granny … and what you’re in for

Before we meet her, I feel I should give you a brief description of my granny, so you know whose child-raising tips you’re getting along with my own.

Born on the 8th November, 1923, in chilly Aberdeen, Granny was the second daughter and youngest child of a lawyer and a teacher. Not a bad start, then. (Apart from the ‘chilly Aberdeen’ bit, obviously. Brrrrr.) The story goes that her parents were engaged for twelve years before finally being in a position to tie the knot.

By the time Granny came along, her dad was fifty and her mother forty-six, ages which would raise an eyebrow or two even today. Nevertheless, two healthy baby daughters came along who are now the proud holders of the title, Oldest Members of the Family. (And also Most Likely to Buy Junk from Catalogues, but we don’t mention that often.)

Granny met my grandfather when she was about nine years old, on one of her family’s annual holidays to a village in North East Scotland called Tarland. After a mere fourteen years of hide and seek in the bushes, giggling on the tennis court, secret liaisons, separation during the war and making sure they were very, very sure, they finally married in 1945. Blimey, he must have been a catch! And he was.

My granddad was an impressive man: intelligent, sporty and as handsome as any Hollywood star of the day – though, to be brutally honest, a star who’d been eating rather a lot of pies in his latter years – and when I knew him he smelled sweetly of pipe tobacco, had white hair and bushy eyebrows, a huge model train set in the attic and a musty study crammed with artefacts from ancient lands and strange objects from his science labs. He ate lots of cheese and biscuits by the fire in the evenings, and had more stories of faraway places and eccentric characters to tell than anyone I’ve ever met. He also carried a mystical air of unpredictability that meant you never quite knew how far any childish silliness would be tolerated before he’d make it very clear that he wanted you out of his hair. Now, Lassie! In short, he was in every way the perfect grandfather in my eyes, and I still miss him and wish I had spent more time talking with him.

He died four years ago of a heart attack, just after walking the dogs across the moor. All that cheese and biscuits didn’t help, they reckoned.

I digress … Granny studied languages at Aberdeen University but spent the last years of the war code-breaking at Bletchley Park, a time she never talks about except to comment grimly on the lack of mountains and fresh air and the intolerable excess of English people. (I did once try to point out that Bletchley is actually in England, hence the English people, but that went down like a lead balloon.) When she finally escaped back to Scotland she completed her teacher training and then taught for two years, before having her first child – my dad – and settling down into a life of motherhood from then on.

I’m not sure if this true, but certainly it seemed to me that for at least the first twenty years of my life Granny thought I was a silly, giggly, empty-headed, directionless ninny. Certainly my love of daydreaming and making up dance routines when there was a table to be laid didn’t help matters, but I think the clincher was when I started watching Neighbours in my teens. That, dear reader, in my granny’s eyes, won me the Idiot of the Year title hands down.

Liz, aged five, her brother Andrew and Granny, 1979

As a consequence of this grandmotherly disapproval, at least as I saw it, we spoke very little; I didn’t really know her, and what I witnessed of her quick tongue and lightning-fast reactions made me a little nervous around her. But about ten years ago everything changed: in a move that shocked even the most radical, optimistic thinkers in my family, I met a fine young chap, got married, had a baby, and all but gave up work to stay at home and be a Mummy. Ka-pow. The New Liz was born.

Suddenly, Granny and I found common ground: motherhood. Our shared experience of having kids young, working hard to keep the family together, our children happy and healthy and our outside interests going without going bananas during the process created a bond between us that had been woefully absent previously. We started talking on the phone about schools, violin lessons, what my kids were up to and any worries I had about them. The children sent her little pictures. She sent them back letters in old-fashioned handwriting that they couldn’t read.

What I gradually realised was so special about this growing mother-daughter-like relationship was, crucially, that she was not my mother. Mothers can say more to their daughters in one look than the entire script-writing team of Desperate Housewives can in a series. Oh, you feed your baby like that, do you? Oh, she still sleeps in your bed, does she? Grrrr. My mum is actually brilliant at letting me raise my kids my way but still, as we all know, the subject of child-rearing can be prickly indeed, even in the kindest, most caring hands where mothers and their daughters are concerned. But a grandmother stands apart from this, and can dole out advice, criticism and support free from any complicating undertones. She’s your gran – just listen to the lady, and be glad she’s still here sucking pear drops!

And so there grew, over a number of years, a camaraderie between Granny and me that I never imagined I’d feel, and we have become firm friends.

She’s still a tough cookie with a fierce brain though, and it’s a brave person who contradicts her, or says anything stupid in her presence. Allegedly … This lady suffers fools about as gladly as I suffer my own stress-related dandruff, and I’ve learned a thing or two about being idiotic in front of her. Thing one: don’t. Thing two: see thing one.

I realised, as our friendship grew stronger, that I was in the very lucky position of being able to ask my grandmother all the questions about her life, and about how she raised her children, that many mums of my generation either feel they can’t ask, or don’t have the opportunity to ask because their grandparents have passed away.

This wonderful old lady, this suddenly ailing powerhouse, this mine of information who had successfully raised four strong, independent people, could be the key to answering the question asked by thousands of stressed, confused, desperate parents every day: how has it gone so wrong for our children and what can we do to put it right?

If you need evidence that something has gone wrong – and you’d really have had to try hard not to have heard any of this before – then consider the following:

In 2007, a Unicef report on the wellbeing of children and young adults put the UK bottom of the league of twenty-one economically advanced countries.

The same report found that children growing up here suffer greater deprivation, worse relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy country in the world.

Only forty per cent of the UK’s eleven, thirteen and fifteen year olds find their peers ‘kind and helpful’, which is the worst score of all the developed countries.

More than thirty per cent of fifteen to nineteen year olds are not in education or training and are not looking beyond low-skilled work.

According to the children’s charity NCH in 2007, one in ten young people suffers from significant mental health problems, and the prevalence of emotional problems and conduct disorders has doubled since the 1990s.

According to a Children’s Society survey in 2008, a quarter of children say they often feel depressed, and seventy per cent of fourteen to seventeen year olds say they feel under pressure to look good and are on a diet some or all of the time.

“British children … are more tested, more punished, more imprisoned, more unhappy and more generally disliked, distrusted, feared and demonised than they are pretty much anywhere else in the developed world.”

Deborah Orr, writing in The Independent, June 2008

Yikes! The grim, bleak picture painted above is one that many of us already suspected was there, and fret about daily. It starkly illustrates that our twenty-first-century children are losing out on one of the most important phases of their lives; a time that sets them up for life; a time that is irreplaceable and invaluable. In short, children are missing out on a proper childhood.

Now then, before we get too depressed, it’s important in any discussion about childhood in times past to be very careful not to mythologise it – to see it through the rose-tinted glow of Time; to imagine it was perfect and lovely and happy and jolly for all children. It wasn’t. Times really were tough for many kids, even fifty years ago. There was real hardship. We may remember our own childhoods as a time of sweet innocence, uninterrupted hours of playing with hand-made toys, cooking with mother, climbing trees and watching Fingermouse, but it wasn’t all wonderful! Things our kids take for granted like hot water on demand, central heating making every room in the house toasty and cupboards full of fresh food whenever they’re hungry were not the norm for many of us growing up.

But children were at least given the chance to be children and to enjoy this childhood beyond their fourth birthday – and that’s what’s missing now. Getting that experience back for our kids is the crux of what we’re going to be seeking to do in this book.

Asking where it has all gone wrong is all very well, but what we really need to ask is, how can we put things right? How do you ensure children have a happy childhood these days? Why has it become so difficult and so complicated? And is there anything simpler from previous generations that we could try to implement in ours?

In a bid to answer these and many other pressing questions of the day I decided to ask Granny, while I still could. I talked to her at length about all of this over a period of a year, while her toe-related illness went through it ups and downs, and it’s these conversations that are recounted in this book. I wasn’t sure what I would get: maybe a few snippets of useful information here and there, a funny story or two about tin baths or halfpenny sweets, or a memory dug up from the depths.

What I actually got outstripped all expectations – Granny’s stories and details taught me so much about the essential elements of child-rearing that all of us could put into practice today, and in doing so, remove much of the stress, worry and hair-tearing that seems increasingly to accompany modern parenting. Of course the world is very different now and I’ve allowed for twenty-four-hour TV, internet chat rooms and fast-food chains in my own tips and advice. But I’m now completely convinced that there is much about raising kids and about family life in general we can and should learn, simply by talking to the oldest generation alive today. They generally offer biscuits and limitless tea while they’re at it, so it’s not such a bad deal really.

I hope some of it proves useful and effective to you and makes your experience of raising your own troublesome brood a good deal simpler and more enjoyable than it was proving before. Who knows – we might even manage to raise a generation of kids who can spell ‘No ASBO for me today, thanks’ properly.

I also hope it makes you think about where you come from, how you, and your parents before you, were raised and how you might try to use some of their wisdom and experience in your own children’s upbringing. It’s best to discard the ‘kids up chimneys, regular beatings with sticks and general misery’ and try to stick to the good, sensible bits instead.

But they’re your kids. You decide.

Liz and her Granny in Scotland, November 2008.

Chapter One

CHILDHOOD
The very basics

The first day of our holiday! And what a day – the sun has made the unprecedented move of coming out for a whole hour (no, really) and my children have missed it all by their own unprecedented move of sleeping until nine o’clock. Typical. I blame the mountain air.

When I finally turf them out of bed with the cunning promise of hot chocolate – if and only if they manage to get dressed in something moderately presentable without being asked more than six times – it is well and truly time for a morning coffee. And so it is that we make our first trip down the road to Granny’s house.

We have a somewhat perfect set-up here: we’re staying in my parents’ house, and my parents are not. Result. To cap it all, Granny only lives three doors down the road so we can see her as often as we like – without having to stay in her house. The reason this is such a good thing will become very apparent later. You’ve been warned.

By the time we get there, our children have already said their brief hellos and are tearing down to the bottom of the garden. I am so happy to see Granny, and to be back in the place where I spent most of my childhood holidays: falling out of trees, getting lost, terrorising the cats and getting into trouble. A lot. For her part, Granny’s broad smile and sparkly eyes show she is over the moon to see us too (can’t think why – we are nothing but noise and mayhem) but she looks frail, unsteady on her legs, and generally as though life has just dealt her a nasty few months.

‘Well you look great,’ I say, giving her a big hug. ‘I thought you were ill? Are you malingering, or is there really something wrong with you?’

She laughs, and prods her foot with the garden fork she’s holding. Why she has been gardening in her condition I can’t say, but that’s just the way she is. You can’t argue.

‘Oh well, it’s just my silly toe. Means I can’t walk, but you know, I’m fine apart from that. So who’s for coffee?’

Ten minutes later my husband has been discharged, caffeinated beverage in hand, to play with the little people, leaving me alone to have a good natter with Granny. Shrieks of laughter and excitement fly up from the garden every so often – and the kids seem to be having fun too.

Having fun: now there’s a thing. Surrounded by all of our incessant – and often quite unnecessary – rushing, working, worrying, buying, cleaning and general obsessive busyness, it seems to me that our children are left with remarkably little time for what being a child is surely all about: having FUN. Having the freedom to muck about, dig in the earth, find little bugs, stick them down their sister’s neck, and not worry about anything; being able to just BE.

Granny notices this too.

‘Just look at that lot – happy as ducks in water down there, adventuring. It’s beautiful. You don’t see so many kids these days just playing freely like children should, without an adult or a piece of silly legislation to spoil it all for them.’

There’s a pause, while I think of a neat way of asking the question that pretty much sums up the core of this entire book. Drum roll … Deep breath …

Splish! A suicidal greenfly lands in my coffee.

Fishing the squirming insect out with my little finger, I try again.

The big rush

‘Granny?’

‘Yes?’

‘You know there’s a lot of concern these days about what’s happening to our children’s health and happiness, and that many kids aren’t having what we consider to be a proper childhood any more.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Well,’ I pop my drowning friend on the corner of an old copy of National Geographic so he can take some time to reconsider all his life choices. ‘What do you think childhood is actually for?’

There is a long pause, as she searches for a tactful way to answer this that won’t make me feel as stupid as a remarkably stupid person sitting a remarkably difficult nuclear physics exam.

‘Well,’ she offers at last, giving her coffee a little stir. ‘Firstly, I think childhood is for having TIME. Time to think, time to learn, to process, to experiment, to grow into yourself. There seems to be so little time available to kids these days for any of that. It’s all rush, rush, rush.’

‘Yes, but that’s just how it is in modern times, Granny, isn’t it? So much can happen at once, with email and mobile phones and BlackBerrys – that’s a kind of phone by the way, not a fruit – that we never get a chance to just stop.’

‘Exactly, and there’s your problem. Adults can rush about if they like, but rushing children means they lose that important freedom to play properly. You have your whole adult life for such responsibilities and constraints – they’re not for children. How can they learn through play, using their imagination, if they are stopped every twenty minutes to rush on to the next task?’

OK, here I am guilty as charged, and, dare I say it, you quite possibly are too. My kids are constantly being told to ‘Stop doing that now, it’s time for …’ and if that sentence doesn’t end in ‘school’ then it’s ballet or dinner, or homework, or bed. Or something! We all know kids who are marched from pillar to post, in a supposed bid to give them the ‘best’ childhood, whatever that means.

Granny isn’t done yet.

‘And it’s not just the pace of their lives that takes their childhood away. It’s also what they’re exposed to and how they are treated. Childhood is a heavenly time and you should try to make it last as long as you possibly can for them – so why dress your three year old up like a pop star or coach your little ones for university or stage school? There are plenty of years ahead for that, and the early years of childhood are not the time. You don’t need to cram it all in before they’re ten!’

The curse of worrying

She stands up gingerly and hobbles to fetch a box half full of what looks like they might once have been ginger biscuits. When offered, I take one, nervously. I’m reasonably sure you can’t die from eating a ten-year-old ginger biscuit, so let’s keep an old lady happy.

‘When I was young,’ she continues, sitting down again and taking a suspiciously chewy bite of something that should be rather crunchy, ‘we didn’t worry. We really didn’t. We had very few things, but what we did have was the freedom to live happily and to grow – without worry. Kids seem to have so much to worry about now – but why? Why put that on them?’

It’s true indeed that there is far more for children to fret about than even when I was growing up ages and ages ago … in the 1980s. My children worry about everything: from getting their five portions of fruit a day to what they wear, whether they’ll pass their ballet exams; whether they have even a tenth of the myriad technological gadgets on offer in Tesco’s; what’s on YouTube; if they have seen all the latest films; whether the world is about to burn itself into a crisp; why they haven’t received any emails for a month; if they are the only kids in the class to go to bed at eight o’clock, and a million other things.

Much of this has not come from me (especially the five portions thing, which the school curriculum seems to obsess about and it drives me crazy) but from school and their friends. So what can we parents do to alleviate some of this concern?

Over to Granny: ‘Well, you don’t have to heap so much responsibility onto their shoulders, do you?’

‘Responsibility? Like what?’

‘Like all of your own worries. If you are worried about how much exercise they take, then just fit some more into their daily life, without making a big deal about it. Don’t have a long talk with them about how bad it is not to exercise enough. They don’t need to know that until they are well into their teens, and if you’ve got them into a healthy routine they’ll do it as part of their normal life anyway. Stressing kids out about what they eat, and all the bad things that are happening in the world, and how much work you have to do, and deadlines and things going on in a marriage are not at all for children’s ears.’

‘So, basically you’re saying we should chill out more and protect them from a lot of our worries?’

‘Yes! It’s about as simple and easy as that. It even extends to all the little responsibilities you give them, like what they wear, what they eat, what they watch. Children aren’t designed to take so much responsibility on board – they sometimes need to be told: this is the way it is, so eat up, or put this on, and that’s the way it is!’

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

Worry is a terrible thing to load onto a child and causes all manner of problems. They should be free to learn without any responsibility and concerns that belong in the adult world. They don’t need to be bombarded with information and offered hundreds of choices – tell them what they need to know, make sure they have what they need, and leave the rest to the grown ups.

The issue of work and marital issues is one many of us can identify with: I get really crotchety when either of these is causing me grief (usually it’s both, but let’s not dig too deep into this!) and I know my kids pick up on it very fast. The same was true when we moved house and started to have financial concerns recently. My usually delightful and sunny temperament (a mild note of sarcasm here …) was replaced by that of an irritable and decidedly un-jolly witch, and I know my kids were all affected by the general stress that floated on every dust particle in the entire house – and given the state of the building work, there were millions of those.

Of course, family stress is nothing terribly new – who doesn’t remember overhearing a blazing row between parents and waiting upstairs with bated breath, convinced they were either about to kill each other with frying pans or file for divorce before bath time? But the difference is that any worries we may have had were lessened because we had more freedom elsewhere. Having talked to many adults about this, it’s pretty clear to me that a significant majority of us had plenty of opportunity to get away from it all and be kids: to run about unsupervised and loosen our knots out properly, in the fresh air, and in relative freedom from the Adult World. These days it happens far less as children are contained, controlled and generally smothered and squashed from every direction.

Or, of course, they seek refuge in the wonderful, though equally worrying for reasons we’ll come to later, two-dimensional world of the internet.

So am I right to want to get some of this sense of mental and emotional freedom back for my children? Certainly the way things are doesn’t feel quite right to me – and I know it’s not what many other parents I chat with on a daily basis want for their kids either. Perhaps by putting some of what Granny suggests into practice we can make things better for our pressurised children, and so far Granny’s thoughts have given me plenty of ideas of how to do this. Wonder what else she has up her sleeve …

When push comes to shove

A small child I think I recognise comes to the door pasted in a brown, slimy substance and looking very pleased with himself.

‘Charlie!’ I exclaim, dreadful thoughts of which drain/ditch/bog/dead animal this slime could possibly have come from flying through my head. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’

Granny, meanwhile, is chuckling away happily.

‘Oh, just look at you! I think someone’s been having a very good time – haven’t you, young man?’

Vigorous, proud nodding is then accompanied by, ‘Mummy, Mummy, I’ve made a pond! Do you want to come and see?!’

Before I have a chance to reply, the bog baby disappears happily behind the huge spruce tree again. Granny, meanwhile, has another tip for me about childhood.

‘I think something you young parents would do well to bear in mind is what you think you are trying to achieve.’

‘What we’re trying to achieve?’ If you must know, what I’m mainly trying to achieve is not drowning in the whirlpool that is my daily life, and if I could stop these bloody crow’s feet from spreading across my entire face that’d be a bonus as far as I’m concerned. I wisely choose to keep these musings to myself.

‘It seems to me that a lot of parents today spend a huge amount of time ferrying their children from piano lesson to cricket club to I don’t know what else, and they think they are doing their kids a favour.’

‘Well, they sort of are, aren’t they? Learning to play music, and dance and do sport is all part of their education, and it’s fun.’

‘Oh yes, some of it is fantastic. But it’s the scale of the thing now. When your child is so tired she can’t stay awake at the table for all the activities she has crammed into her day – and because her parents won’t enforce a decent, early bedtime, but that’s another matter – isn’t it time to let a few things go? You have to think of the child and what she is actually getting out of it all.’

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

If you fill every waking moment with clubs and

lessons and activities, where is all the time for

childhood – for free, creative, imaginative play?

It’s a vital point, and I’m interested in why this intense activity-cramming is happening.

Why are all we meddling, fussing parents so frightened if our kids can’t speak eight languages and compose symphonies by the time their milk teeth fall out? Who are we trying to impress? And who are we doing it all for – the kids themselves? I’m not so convinced.

I’ve known children in the Reception class at school who are only given toys if they learn their times tables. Aged four!! Of course it’s a great idea to teach basic maths and literacy as part of their everyday lives, and we do it all the time – adding up the peas on the plate, learning how to write ‘sausages’ and so on, but why teach it in such a pressurised, results-driven way? It’s rather unnecessary, I think. But there are many kids under this kind of low-level, constant pressure these days, as so many parents worry about giving their children ‘the best chance’.

And there’s the nub of the issue. What is the best chance? I put the inescapably meagre case for the defence to Granny.

‘I think what’s happened is that we’ve lost confidence in ourselves, and we’ve got confused about what the “best” is for our children,’ I venture.

‘Oh, then let me help you out. ‘Best’ doesn’t mean sent to the most classes. “Best” doesn’t mean getting the biggest prize. The best thing you can do for your child is be there. And that’s where much of this pushing and shoving comes from.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, so many parents aren’t there, looking after their children as we used to be. So you feel guilty, understandably, and you try to make up for it by creating some “wonder child” who has everything – including extra French lessons and Tai Kwon Do. It’s supposed to show what a good parent you are, I suppose, when really you just need to be at home more.’

Aha, a masterful play of the guilt card. And, though I feel it’s unjustly aimed mainly at the womb-bearing half of the species, it’s still a winning one.

‘There seems to be a belief,’ she continues, ‘that if you put them into enough classes and courses and get them all the grades, achievements and skills, that will in some way make up for your absence and give them the ticket to a good life.’

Granny has raised an important point about guilt and making up for our absence, but I think she’s missed an even greater one raised by two mothers below:

“I just can’t believe how many extra activities some kids do – and yes, I do feel under pressure to not let mine fall behind. But at the same time, I want my kids to have more time at home to do what they want, and not have to do cello practice or Spanish verbs. They are at primary school, and it doesn’t seem right to me to take so much of their play time away.”

Helen, mother of Suzanne and Tom

“We were expected to be bored sometimes when I was a child. Now, we stimulate our kids all the time. I over-plan like mad!! Sometimes I can’t arrange a play date for my daughter and her friends for months because they’re all so busy. With all the alpha mummies or alpha daddies there comes a lot of ‘Oh, is she in Japanese class yet?’ We don’t have to raise our kids this way: a six year old doesn’t need a PA!”

Linda, mother of Jessica, six

The pressure from other parents not to ‘fall behind’, and to ‘keep up’ is immense. A lot of our manic ‘activity-doing’ with our kids is not to alleviate guilt, but because many parents feel under unspoken pressure to keep up with everyone else. And I know from my own kids that much of it also comes from the children themselves: if their best mates are playing the piano, they want to play the piano too!

Between the three of them, my own children do four ballet classes a week, plus violin, cello, football, chess and choir. And they’re all at primary school. So am I a pushy mum?

Well no, I don’t think I am, because they want to do all of this. If any of them wanted to stop, they could at any time. They have asked to do all of these things, and they absolutely love them. In fact, they have asked to do a good deal more activities and classes that I’ve had to say no to, just to keep some time free for us all to be together. So maybe the well-intended push turns into unacceptable shove when the poor love wants to play the trombone about as much as he wants to eat his own poo. Each child to their own, but beware the considerable pressure from other parents; you let your child do what is right for them, and sod the irritating show offs next door whose son plays cricket for the Junior England squad, while his sister’s got a part in Steven Spielberg’s next movie. Good luck to them, and good luck to yours, too.

So, how can we stop the pressure cooker from exploding?

GRANNY’S TIPS

Don’t over-schedule your children. Let them have some free time that isn’t planned or time-constrained.

Be brave and resist pressure from school and peers.

Allow your (young) child to have plenty of time at home. Their childhood will be over in a flash.

Playing by the rules

So far Granny has advised not rushing too much, not worrying too much, not studying too much, not pressurising too much … anything else?

Yes, one more thing. Didn’t you just know it?

‘But you know,’ she says with her oft practised and amazingly effective ‘listen to your grandmother now’ stare, ‘I’m not saying you should just give kids a free rein to mess about all the time!’

‘Oh, right. I thought that didn’t sound much like you.’

Granny has a sharp tongue and a firm hand and has been known to use both on children who step out of line. Not that I would know, obviously.

‘At the same time as all this freedom you have remember the other thing childhood is for.’

What’s that then – making tiny models of squirrels out of your own snot? Saying rude things at full volume about people ahead of you in the Post Office queue and then having them say how sweet you are, instead of clonking you on the head with a jiffy bag? Eating sweets until you throw up into your sibling’s lap? Turns out Granny has something else in mind.

‘It’s the time when you learn the rules.’

‘What, the Rules of Life?’ (I think I may have been absent when some of these were spelled out … Sorry, Mum.)

‘Yes, if you like. There are a lot of rules that we all have to understand and abide by if we are to all live together peacefully. And childhood is when we learn the very basic ones, and learn where the boundaries are, from our parents.’

And presumably, I say, when children overstep those boundaries, as they so often do, they need to know about it …

‘Oh yes, of course they do. You have to teach that to a child, by disciplining them when they’re naughty. It’s not cruel, as some people say now. It’s part of what parenting is about.’

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

Rules give a child’s world boundaries and allow them to feel safe. If you can’t get the rules straight and clear in your child’s mind and teach them that their actions have consequences when they are very young, you really set yourself up, and the people around you, for a tough time ahead.

Granny has a few last thoughts on the importance of childhood and I start taking notes, lest my befuddled, knackered parent’s brain has trouble retaining all of this valuable stuff.

Letting kids be kids

Granny takes a good slug of coffee and settles back in her chair.

‘You asked what has gone wrong with the way children are raised today – well, I think lots of you are doing a very good job, actually.’

Oh, well, thank you very much. Time for a communal pat on the back methinks … Oh, hang on – hold the patting, there’s a ‘but’, …

‘But one of the main things that’s happened is that you have stopped treating children as they need to be treated.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, as so many of you seem to have forgotten somewhere along the very busy line, childhood is the time before adulthood. That may sound obvious, but it doesn’t seem to be the case any more.’

It doesn’t?

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

Childhood is the time to be a child, to be treated as a child and not to be treated as equals with adults.

Ah yes. The old ‘treating kids as equals’ habit. This worrying trend is one I have noticed increasingly in the last decade, and it disturbs me. Kids often seem to be put on a level with their parents now: they’re asked what Madam would like for dinner, what time Sir would like to go to bed, what her Ladyship would like to wear, what Mummy can do to make her offspring’s lives absolutely perfect in every way, in fact.

Talking to some of my mum friends and just listening to conversations around me in the street I observe the same concerns, but it seems few people feel safe to say that they don’t want to treat kids as equals. That they feel there should be a ‘place’ for children, and another for adults. Perhaps there’s a fear that they’ll be seen as unkind, or cruel or even – Heaven forbid! – Bad Parents.

But hang on, give the self-flagellation a break: is asking what your child wants for dinner really treating him like a mini adult, or are we just trying to give kids a voice, and to listen to their opinions? That’s surely not a bad thing. I mean, they may poo their pants for several years and everything, and make your hair fall out, but they have feelings and we can listen to them!

Granny thinks it’s more to do with role clarity.

‘I think that in many ways the line between childhood and adulthood has become so blurred and this is causing a lot of problems, because you lose your authority.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, where to start? The clothing that’s made for little children that looks like it’s fallen out of a seventeen-year-old pop star’s dressing room, the fact that parents cannot discipline children for fear of being told off themselves, the number of tiny tots who are dragged out to cafés every weekend to have a cappuccino with their parents – that’s no place for a small child! They want to play, and muck about, not sit in cafés while Mummy and Daddy read the newspaper.’

Now hold on – I happen to agree that there are far too many kids being hoiked off to Starbucks several times a week and are all but ignored while they’re there or given gargantuan muffins and pastries to keep them quiet. It’s very depressing actually. But we do it from time to time, and I consider it valuable – no, essential – grown-up time, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a nice sit down over a latte while my kids read a book, or draw a picture. Or, as we do most of the time, actually talk to one another without emptying the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry or picking up thousands of bits of Bionicles from the kitchen floor. Going to cafés means having unadulterated family time, and that’s a good thing.

But Granny doesn’t mean only this. She sees it as one example of the many ways children have crept into an adult world. Being given the same responsibilities and choices as we have.

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

The way children are reasoned with is also quite extraordinary to me – why can’t you just say to a child ‘this is how it is, I would like you to do this now, please’ and not have to explain your reasons why?

Granny is surely not saying it’s better to ignore children’s feelings and opinions? Even she wouldn’t go that far!

‘No, but sometimes it’s absolutely fine to tell a child that they just have to do as they are asked. They are children, and you are adults. Period. You don’t have to treat children as though they are about to fall apart – or as though they are your best friend. Sometimes life is tough, and unfair, and understanding this is part of childhood too.’

Oh, how many of us have fallen foul of that wonderfully tempting business of treating our children as our best friends? They’re cute; they like shopping; they don’t bitch about you behind your back (much) and they love staying up late having a good chat. What’s not best friendly about all that?

We are to touch on this sticky issue again in a few months but for now it’s very handy that it crops up here. I’m not sure if it’s a totally modern phenomenon – for all I know Roman mothers used to hang out in the Grandus Shoppingus Mallus with little Julius and Athena – but wanting to be ‘bezzy mates’ with our children, particularly mothers with their daughters, is something that seems to have taken over families of late and it’s not an entirely good thing. Mothers out on shopping trips with their five year olds, having girly lunches with their ten year olds, getting their hair done together – even having facials together when their child could be off reading a good book or inventing something involving toilet rolls and Sellotape. (Interestingly, this is still what many little boys seem to like doing …) All this adult-like behaviour is … well, it’s kind of weird, no?

Sometimes I desperately want to feel like a best friend to my children, but let’s be perfectly honest here: the reason many of us do this is either because we didn’t have the relationship with our own parents we would have liked and so we want to create this pally-ness with our kids, or because we’re desperately trying to recreate a good relationship enjoyed with our parents. Both are dangerous games to play. In many ways I actually do feel like a best friend to my children because they will always come to me to talk about things that are troubling them, to tell me something funny or to cry. But I feel it’s also essential to maintain some kind of authority, and for me to feel and behave as though I am their mother, their parent and therefore in some way responsible for them and in charge of them.

Does Granny think this is important in order to keep our kids under control?

‘Well, partly. But don’t forget it’s also because children need certain securities when they are growing up and one of them is knowing that they have parents who are there to act as guides, as role models and as protectors. Being best friends removes this safety net and that’s very unsettling for a child.’

This is a point I had never thought of. If you are over-friendly with your kids, far from making them feel happier and more secure, it can actually have the opposite effect because the role that they so need from you – that of the person in control, and where the buck stops – is missing in their lives. It establishes boundaries and draws out an invisible ‘safe zone’ within which they know what’s what and know they’ll be OK.

It takes a while to realise the importance of this, but it’s worth taking that time and remembering it.

Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

Childhood only happens once, and it’s terribly short as it is. Be their parent. Be in charge, and give them everything they need to be children. It’s the foundation for everything that’s to come.

So what do some other parents think childhood is for?

“Watching clouds.”

Don, 58, father of two

“Childhood is for growing memories. It is for having as much fun as you can fit in. Childhood is a time for ‘doing’ without being judged; for laughing when you know why and when you don’t; for learning to trust; to be free. ”

Rebecca , 40, full time mother of four

“Childhood is for simply being a child; for growing up and learning about the world, and learning about survival as well as how to dream – even Einstein says, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’; childhood is also a call on a parent to be properly human: to be less selfish and more humble in the face of new life; to be strong and yet feeling, protective and prepared to let go.”

Jeremy, 40 -something, father of two

“I love thinking myself back to early childhood for the sheer feeling of acceptance with everything as it was – no intrusive expectations or judgments of character. My brother and I just played and played and played in our own world and it was wonderful! ”

Jane, 63, mother of four and grandmother of four

Now then, did you notice as you were reading the thoughts above that the word ‘judge’ cropped up in various guises? We’d be well advised to think about that more often in the way we raise our children. We are very quick to give judgement, to offer our opinion, say what we think, compliment and criticise, but actually sometimes it’s best just to shut up, listen and not judge at all.

These thoughts, all of them beautiful, moving and true, along with Granny’s own suggestions from another time, form the very backbone of what you read from here on. The idea is never to wish ourselves back to times gone by – that way madness lies (and bad haircuts).

What I will seek to do instead is to find ways of putting some of this carefree and happy and, if such a word can be used here, successful childhood back into today’s world.

After this first chat I feel ready to start tackling some of the issues we raised in greater depth, and to really dig deep into the vast pool of knowledge Granny has from her child-rearing days, and that continues to this day, of course: fifty year olds still need their Mummy sometimes!

But not right now. A slimy pond awaits, and I’ll be in the Naughty Mummy corner before you can say ‘last one covered in mucks’ a rotten egg!’ if I don’t go and check it out, as promised.

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