What can you do about people who never stop talking about their babies? One of my colleagues has just come back from maternity leave and can’t stop going on about hers as if no one has ever had one before. It is driving the whole office nuts.
Name and address withheld
A new mother is allowed baby boasting as well as maternity leave. It is natural for her to go on about the new arrival as if it were the first miracle. I dare say that the she-wolf mother of Rome growled her pride at Romulus and Remus. It is human nature. In the same way, at a lower level, people insist on showing you their holiday snaps, or, if you are really unlucky, their holiday videos. We have to put up with the natural pride of new mothers with generosity and good humour, and a deaf ear. A few sleepless nights will cure her disease.
How can I get my children to sit down to civilised meals at table and make polite conversation?
Mary Hutchinson, Cheltenham
By patience, good humour, good food, meals on time and entertaining chat. Pizza Express is conducting a national survey of modern table manners, under the apron of Rachel Holland. They have found interesting facts. Item 1: British parents want Mediterranean meal times for their children – they say that sitting down at a table with the family improves social skills. Item 2: Treat children in restaurants as mini-adults. We must train our little savages by cunning and good example. It is the most useful and long-lasting work we can do.
My son is at a school where most boys have birthday parties in hired sports halls and invite the whole class. I think they’re grim, apart from very expensive, and have held out in favour of taking half a dozen friends to a film, or similar. My son doesn’t seem too fussed, but I don’t know if I really ought to return the hospitality he has enjoyed from more or less the whole class at least once?
Name and address withheld
The school birthday party is a modern form of rat race. Parents compete to make little Johnny’s or Amanda’s birthday outshine the others with a paintballing day or by entertaining with a live boa constrictor. It is less invidious to invite the whole class, but expensive. Local swimming pools and gyms are quite used to catering for children with organised games, and tea of crisps and Twixes. Not at vast expense. To invite the whole class mitigates favouritism, jealousy and persecution of unpopulars. I should discuss it with your son. He sounds a sensible lad not to be fussed about the childish party stakes. There are so many birthday parties at school now that only mean-minded sneaks are going to make comparisons about who has the best party (children can be mean-minded sneaks). But they have the attention span of butterflies. Nobody will remember next week.
I am expecting my first child and naturally all my relatives are happy and excited. My sister recently gave me ten bin liners full of her children’s old baby clothes and my husband’s sisters have offered us cots, pushchairs and the rest. I mentioned to my sister that we had bought some baby clothes and she was very offended and asked what was wrong with the ones she had given us. My sister-in-law’s pushchair is not suitable for a newborn and the cot is getting tatty, but she insists we have them. I am not ungrateful but how do I explain, without offending them, that I don’t necessarily need all their hand-me-downs?
Name and address withheld
Accept all generous offers with gratitude. Assume that they are meant kindly, not to demonstrate the superiority of Lady Bountifuls. Never spurn hand-me-downs. You don’t have to use them. Nor does your baby. It is natural to want to buy new things for your new baby. But you may be surprised at the amount of kit a baby gets through. You do not explain that you don’t need second-hand clothes. You accept all offers as well-meant. I agree that ten bin liners are more that anybody gave me, thank God. But any clothes surplus to requirements or in perfectly horrendous colours, you give to charity. It is far more important for your baby to grow up in a loving extended family than to wear the latest kit from Gap. For the nosy who later ask how you are getting on with their old carry-cot, a certain economy with the truth is acceptable, for the sake of good family relations.
At a recent outing my husband and I discovered a stranger loudly chastising our older son (aged six) for engaging in some rough play with her son. My son was quite distressed, as he thought they were just having fun. We were incensed that someone would stand over such a young child and wave a finger under his nose. The scene quickly deteriorated with both their fathers becoming involved. I want our son to show respect to his elders, but we felt she was too harsh and should have come to us first to intervene. Is there some way we could have dealt with this better?
Name and address withheld
It would have been better if the encounter could have been conducted without shouting, finger-wagging and (for heaven’s sake) fathers becoming involved. Some parents are fiercely protective of their young. But I do not suppose that the ticking-off will have done your boy harm. We are never too young to learn that our tribe consists of a wide range of creatures with different codes of behaviour. A generation ago the chastisement by a stranger might have consisted of a clip around the ears. Our grandfathers chastised children far too brutally. Today we are frightened even to rebuke them. Your boy knows that you love him unconditionally. It may be no bad thing that he learns that there are others who do not share your view of him.
I am married to a man with a four-year-old daughter and I have a daughter of my own. He has had great trouble getting access, and, after spending a fortune going to court, finally has an agreement. However, his ex-wife still acts as though she is doing him a favour that she can withdraw at any time, and if he breaks any of her arbitrary ‘rules’ she either says frightful things to her daughter, or barges into our home and takes her, upsetting everyone, not least my own child. We would never criticise my stepdaughter’s mother to her or in front of her, but how on earth do we react? We can’t really nod and smile either. Is there any etiquette that covers these sad, modern parenting nightmares?
Name and address withheld
This is a sad situation. It is, alas, all too common. Look at the fathers who perform silly stunts to attract media attention to their difficulties in seeing their children. It is so selfish, and so bad for the children. All that grown-ups can do is to give the children whom they have brought into the world unqualified love and support. To avoid criticising or making unkind remarks about the former partner, even by so much as a raised eyebrow or a sniff. To attempt to have a peaceful relationship with the former partner, however badly we think that he or she is behaving. Think of the children, not ourselves and our failures and injured pride and rage. The future belongs to them, not us. We must march forwards, not back. Do not let your husband’s ex poison your life, and their daughter’s. Rise above her. Find sympathy for her rage. Gosh, that sounds pi. It is easier said than done. But it is best for the little girl to see her parents as allies on her side rather than feuding furies.
Should adults playing games with children give them special concessions, or even let them win? I was a bit taken aback when our game of beach cricket was taken over by a bunch of highly competitive men, to the extent that children playing were outnumbered and relegated to fielding for most of the game.
Sophie Anderson, London
It is patronising for adults to let children win at games, obviously. Children need to learn to lose as well as to win. On the other hand, children are generally smaller and less skilful at most games than adults. The ferocious competitiveness of parents at the fathers’ and mothers’ race at school sports is absurd. To let them win occasionally, without them realising that you are doing so, is good for them. Everybody needs a petty triumph occasionally, to boost morale.
I recently visited friends with my seven-year-old daughter. Both my friend and her husband, who themselves have a five-year-old, constantly criticised my daughter’s behaviour, from her chocolate consumption to her relatively wild games. I know that every family has its own rules, and we definitely got into conflict over this. I tried to use humour, but to no avail. I really appreciate and respect these friends, so what can I do in the future to avoid this?
Martina Shoenfelder, Germany
Your friends showed bad manners in constantly criticising your daughter. And unkindness. They sound insensitive and self-righteous prigs. We all have different standards, rules and diets for our children. The mistake is to suppose that our way is the best way to bring up children. I might try honesty by saying: ‘We all have different rules. I appreciate and respect you. But I find your constant criticism of little Greta wounding. And I don’t think it helps her.’ That is a direct appeal to their good nature.
How can I get my children to do something more useful during their holidays than watch television and use the PlayStation? In particular, how can I get them to read and do their holiday prep?
Desperate Delia, Chelmsford
With the help of those unfashionable but reliable old friends, Patience, Example and Cunning. But join the club. I, too, am struggling with extreme juvenile reluctance to read and aversion to the wilder shores of Pythagoras. All we can do is to make a push for homework early in the day. And remember that we, too, did not spend all our holidays improving ourselves with reading and maths. We, too, wasted golden time. Our children are heavily pressured by work. Perhaps we need to waste time in order to learn how to use it wisely?
The annual problem of persuading my small children to write thank you letters for their Christmas presents is nigh. Have you any advice?
Jane Roberts, Manchester
You are not alone. To thank for a present is a necessary obligation seldom observed these days. I help the children to write a list of their presents and who gave them, as they tear them open in a chaos of wrapping paper, shrieks and ribbon. Then, on Boxing Day, I help them to write their thank yous. I buy a stock of picture postcards for this purpose. They do not need to be long. They do need to be written. Good luck.
My South American husband was disgusted by my children dipping bread in their soup. When I said that this was acceptable in England, he said: ‘Burping is acceptable in some countries, so I will do that,’ and then encouraged the children to do likewise. Putting aside the five-year-old tactics, which one of us is right?
Jessica Salazar, Sheffield
You both are. Table manners vary widely. One man’s meat is another woman’s poisson. It is, however, a Western myth that the Chinese (or some other race) consider it good manners to burp at table. Dipping might be considered chav, naff and builders. If it upsets your husband, I should teach your children not to do it. Why fall out over the minestrone?
You always say that we should forgive, accept etc., but I am hurt by something that has happened. I am a single woman with many debts, and three children. After paying for their cars, undergraduate education, honeymoons and other needs, I took a second mortgage on my house to pay for one daughter’s law school. She and her husband, with one child, said that they would hold off having more children until she had completed her education. Now they have decided to have another child, and she has withdrawn from law school. I told them that I felt betrayed, that as adults they should have taken more precautions and, while I wish them good luck, I will not be able to help them further. My daughter has ceased speaking to me although I have called and written. This affects my relationship with my grandson, whom I want to see. How should I proceed?
Name and address withheld
From the evidence that you give, you have every right to feel hurt. But children do behave like – well, children. I take my hat off to you. I hope that I can manage to be as generous a parent as you have been. But to fall into no speakers with one’s child is a family disaster. You are older and wiser than she is. We have to think of the next generation. It gives them a rotten start to grow up at the heart of a no-speaker family feud. You may not be able to afford any more financial support. And your daughter has no right to expect it. But you can give them love and attention. Being a parent and a grandparent means that we have to persist in being loving and forgiving, even in the face of rage. The alternative is worse.
Should children be seen but not heard?
Mark Villiers, London
Depends. Little pitchers have big ears. And some have bigger mouths. But, on balance, of course not. How are they going to learn how to make conversation intelligently otherwise? When the little dears are screaming their heads off in the car in a stationary tailback on a Bank Holiday, it is hard not to subscribe to this harsh Victorian axiom. But let us talk like calm, gentle, intelligent adults, in the hope that they learn to do likewise.
Small children are, mostly, enchanting. Their parents, alas, sometimes less so. My aunt invited neighbours round for tea. She was understandably traumatised when their three-year-old ran in from the garden and said: ‘Mummy, I need a wee.’ Whereupon the resourceful mother reached for an empty tea-cup and allowed the lad to piddle into it. Is it, under any circumstances, permissible to smack parents?
Mrs Stephenson, London
It is never advisable to smack parents, although the instinct may be irresistible. One must make allowances for the baby-blindness that makes mothers suppose that others must find their infants (and their messes) as enchanting as they do. One also has to carry on living next door to one’s nutty neighbours. Your aunt should have picked up the cup with her fingers wrapped in a napkin, emptied it into the slop basin or flowerbed, and asked sweetly: ‘And now shall we have tea? Will you take it as it comes, or shall I wash the cup out for you?’