Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 23

Family life starts in the home, so that’s what I want to talk to Granny about next. I’m a great believer in the importance of home. Not a house, but a home. It doesn’t matter what this home looks like – whether it has one or five bedrooms, a dedicated playroom or a corner in the kitchen for some toys, matching crockery or charity shop mugs – whether you spend most or only some of your time there, or even who lives there with you. What matters is that it feels like home, and by that I mean it feels safe, familiar, and full of love.

As times have changed, so the way we live in our homes has too. No longer do we eat in formal dining rooms: instead it’s more common now to have an open-plan living area where we cook, eat and play in one big space. Children often have a bathroom that is separate to their parents’ bathroom, and you’re as likely to see an office in a corner of the lounge as a place to sit and read.

Given the frightening statistics we’ve already seen about children being apparently so unhappy and troubled, is there something we can learn from the past about how to run a happy family home?