Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 20

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.