A Spoonful of Sugar

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!