'Tough love' advice for parents of university graduates

Is it actually impossible for people to understand that children, being humans and all, are individuals and therefore no one single solution to the supposed problems of education or parenting - regardless of who is proposing it - is going to work for everyone?

Apparently so.

Advice on using "tough love" to motivate children to find a job and leave home after university is being issued to parents by the government.

The guide from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills admits graduates could find things difficult in the current financial climate.

It warns against nagging but also against being "too supportive".

Perhaps Lord Mandelson should take heed of his own advice and stop nagging us, then, not to mention easing off on the non-negotiable "support". Oh, wait, here's a bit more:

The guide also advises against allowing a few weeks back home to turn into a few months. Its solution is to show some "tough love" by not doing their washing and ironing.

Where my children live and what our domestic arrangements are are none of the government's business, quite frankly. How have we ended up paying for this rubbish to be produced?

But onwards:

Boys aged three 'must work more'

Boys aged three and four must be made to write more to stop them falling behind girls before they even reach school, the Government will order nurseries and childminders.

So the "problem" is that boys, in general, develop certain skills more slowly and/or differently than girls? Is it a problem? Or is it just a fact that requires no meddling and tinkering with, just basic acceptance and accommodation?

Nope, a problem, it seems, for a government that demands equality and diversity without the diversity part, thank you.

New boy-friendly guidance is to be sent to all nurseries and childminders advising them to get the youngest boys to take more interest in writing, scribbling and drawing – basically just putting pencil to paper.

Oh for goodness' sake. How long before it comes through the letterbox of all parents - hey, mums and dads, here's some expert advice from the DCSF: why not encourage your three year old boy to put pencil to paper?

After a year of school, more than one in six boys cannot write his own name or simple words such as "mum", "dad" or "cat" – double the number of girls – official figures show.

Well, either, boys are really stupid and lazy - in which case how do so many of them end up running the country - or... perhaps they might be starting school a tad too early?

Early-years experts condemned the move, arguing that having more targets to get children writing by the age of five would be "developmentally inappropriate" and potentially damaging, particularly for boys.

Quite. If it wasn't for the otherwise impossibility of delivering what might pass as an education to the masses through institutions, no-one would consider the exact age at which children learn to read or write to be at all important, apart from those who believe that statistical averages are targets for children, rather than a derivation of vast human difference.

But that doesn't stop Dawn Primarolo:

Dawn Primarolo, the Children's minister, said in an interview with The Independent that after 12 years of Labour government, the gender gap remained a "stubborn" and "worrying" problem.

Only because she says so! Either, the system is broken, or 50% of children are. I'll let you guess where I am placing my bet.

"It is about readiness to learn. It is part of the development process. There is a gap, and it is a worrying gap," Ms Primarolo said. "What we can see is that boys, particularly on emotional development, lag behind girls. That emotional development is very important in language development through play before they start school and reading and writing.

Dawn, on the other hand, would prefer to blame the broken children - the lazy, stupid and emotionally stunted boys who have been failed by their parents and can only be fixed if government guidance on how they must play in a life-relevant way is followed to the letter:

The guidance, which will be sent to nurseries from January, will include advice to set up role-play activities tailored to boys' interests, such as builders taking phone messages and writing up orders, post office employees writing on forms, and waiters taking orders from customers.

Sorry, is the same government that is so passionate about child-led learning?

Boys will also be encouraged to write using unusual materials such as chocolate powder and coloured sand to make marks on the floor and walls outside.

And this is a prime example of how they just. Don't. Get. It.

Scenario A: Child spills chocolate powder on the kitchen floor and starts tracing patterns in it with his fingers. Parent observes, and if appropriate lies down and joins in. Parent and child discuss images, shapes, letters or numbers - or possibly the chocolate powder itself - and perhaps develop a story or narrative through play. Parent and child enjoy emotional bonding as well as fruitful learning experience and tidy up together afterwards, demonstrating further understanding of co-operation and domestic work.

Scenario B: Teacher with too little time and too many children checks her DCSF To Do and How To lists for the lesson, complete with targets to be achieved and qualitative outcomes to be recorded in media of her choice. Teacher eyes box of chocolate powder doubtfully and sprinkles on desks of boys only. Girls deem this to be unfair and attempt to dab freshly licked fingers into Tommy's picture of a cement mixer. Tommy snaps. Fight ensues. All children, desks and equipment covered in slightly gritty chocolate paste. Teacher cries.

Ms Primarolo said the new guidance aims to get all nurseries and childminders to learn from those who have successfully narrowed the gender gap.

Or those who say they have (in a matter of years) successfully undone the work of hundreds of generations of human development and adaptation that continues to differentiate men and women to this day. 

But there are sensible people out there:

Child-development specialists have opposed the writing targets for five-year-olds since they were first proposed, arguing that many children, particularly boys, do not develop the fine motor skills needed for writing until they are six or seven.

Sue Palmer, a former headteacher and author of the book 21st Century Boys, described the decision as "state-sponsored child abuse", arguing that boys were developmentally behind at birth and needed time to "run, jump and play, in order to acquire the physical control and capacity to focus that they will need later on".

She said: "The Government's belief that they can accelerate human development is just nonsense. This is massive control freakery which will be disastrous for the children. These very young children have become hostages to political fortunes because ministers believe that their political futures depend on getting a certain number of children to reach these targets by the age of five. That is just wrong."

Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University and a founder of the Open Eye campaign against the early-years curriculum, warned that many of the targets for five-year-olds were inappropriate for the age group. He added: "Many of the much-criticised 'teaching to test', assessment-driven characteristics of the primary school are now invading our nursery settings."

Not that Dawn - or Toby "traditional approach" Young for that matter - will be listening to them.

I don't want anybody else telling me that what they think is best is the way it should be for all children, thank you very much. I think I'll continue to just say no.

Update: Jax covers Toby's article in detail here.

Stop forcing children to grow up too quickly, says Archbishop of Canterbury.

Well, yes. "too quickly" is all very well - but what do you mean by that, Rowan?

We shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go.  

I happen to agree that these things are unhelpful - but what to do? Bans, rules and regulations? Or might we take personal action as responsible parents to be the change we want to see in the world?

We shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regrettable stage on the way to the real thing...

The myth of golden childhood again - a discrete and measurable stage of development in the life of every child; a time of innocence and joy that was once so gloriously celebrated by the merry urchins who were sent up chimneys, down mines and around looms throughout their waking hours.

...which is ‘independence’, turning you into a useful cog in the social machine that won’t need too much maintenance.

Hmmm. I see independence as a positive goal, unless one wants to be vulnerable to authoritarians attempting to govern the intimacies of one's life in some way. Whilst others might think and do differently, my role as parent to my children is to ensure they grow into independent people - at their own, unique pace - as human beings are genetically predispositioned to do. I don't believe it is my role to make them happy, or kind, or even responsible. They must choose those things. But supporting their transition to independence, and modelling the behaviours and qualities I would like them to have - yes, that is most certainly my job.

Parents should learn to enjoy their children’s dependence on them, instead of forcing them prematurely into independence.

Yes, a child forced prematurely into independence is an unhealthy and unhappy thing, and a child's dependence is so fleeting it should be enjoyed and cherished while it exists. But how equally unhealthy and unhappy is the child whose dependence is artificially preserved - most often by parents, but also parenting experts and advisers - who are terrified of risk, of raw human emotion and drives, of life itself!

In the long term, dependence is not a productive state to remain in. Interdependence is possibly the state most worth striving for, where independent human beings realise the benefits of working together voluntarily and co-operatively in order to look after each other as well as themselves.

Each of us is called to grow and mature from an infancy of faith into a mature willingness — like Mary’s — to be instruments not of our own ambition, but of God’s will.

Perhaps this is the problem. I do believe myself to be an instrument of my own ambition. And I don't think that makes me a bad person or parent.

Update: I see Katherine also covers the Archbishop's Christmas sermon here.

I am truly grateful for the existence of people in other countries who can see clearly the dangers inherent in the proposed government inspections of innocent families. Say hello to Elisabeth, who has written this excellent post on the dangers of children's rights as eshrined in the UNCRC and used selectively by Badman to further his cause:

In a shocking move that may eventually effect all families in the United Kingdom, citizen rights will be waived in a bow to UN policy, allowing unqualified government agents the ability to compel entrance into private homes, send parents out and interview their children alone. Though this is a human rights violation, and directly violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, pro UN backers seeded within the UK's government are pushing it through. How? They're using a flawed report by Graham Badman to justify the intrusion. This rushed report leans heavily on the UN's "Rights of the Child" (CRC) legislation which is a very controversial piece of politics if ever there was one. Many say it should be called "Rights TO the Child" because it basically signs them over to the government in decisions ala Hitler.

Hitler said, “ This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

Now, can I point you in the direction of Thinking Love, no Twaddle.

The other question that bugs me a lot is the whole “What constitutes a suitable education?” question. It’s one of those how long is a piece of string questions and I can’t see how it could ever be usefully answered to suit all children of all ages and needs and interests.

Isn’t the very fact that Mrs Thatcher thought all children should receive a one size fits all national curriculum which was then shrunk in the Labour wash the reason so many children find school learning so pointless?

The author, Mum6kids, traces a logical extension of the fears I described in this post regarding certain professionals and their so-called expertise in relation to children with special educational needs. In line with my belief that learning and living are inextricably intertwined, I expanded the concept of special needs out to include any individual human characteristic that can only be accommodated through a uniquely tailored and responsive environment. Human beings function best when their needs are met, not diverted or ignored.

If there is any requirement for families to be inspected, then it won't be just the strictly educational needs of children (if there is such a thing) that local authorities will be called upon to identify and assess. It will also be the features of the life environment they inhabit and the people they co-exist with, which, however uniquely tailored and responsive to those children's needs, might also contain some small shred of humanity. Difference. Diversity.

Mum6kids questions exactly how safe she will be to continue home educating, simply because she uses a wheelchair. She makes reference to an acquaintance who is curently on a 12 steps programme to address his or her alcoholism. She talks about people like me who have had past diagnoses. Not to mention the people who choose to home educate because of their faith. In fact, between us, we could all throw some behaviour or trait that would trigger the red flag warning of a LA officer - whether it's something we're actually rather proud of or something we'd rather change.

Quite how a government so obsessed with political correctness can bring itself to even imply that any one of these features is a useful indicator for safeguarding or other concerns is perplexing. And yet that is precisely what is happening, if we cut to the chase. So-called "indicators" are a dangerous thing - and relying on them to identify a child in need of help is a step on the way to branding the forehead of every man with a "P" for paedophile. And yet, if it saves one child, then in the eyes of the people who can't or won't think intellectually about child protection issues or indeed any matter of risk, all of those branded foreheads and scarred lives are worth it.

For the government to use human traits or behaviour as "indicators" in order to initiate force against people who have not harmed anyone or done anything illegal - the so-called "early interventions" or "focus on prevention" so beloved of this government - is the first step towards a country that is socially engineered according to the whims and fancies of someone like Ed Balls. Creating new rafts of legislation to make the very existence of those traits or behaviours illegal is the second step.

So if only approved children and approved adults are permitted by the government to refuse the offer of state intervention, then who will they be? What will they look like? Because this 5'3" atheist with a degree, 2 children, an overturned diagnosis of bipolar disorder and a penchant for the internets rather enjoys spending time with her 5'11", serene Catholic friend who has a degree, 6 children and absolutely no whizz bang technology in her home. Which one of us trumps the failure to provide a "suitable" education/danger to children stakes?

In short, no-one's really sure what they're so concerned about anymore - safeguarding, education - it all blurs into the same unchartered territory of "joined up working" for professionals who know better than parents how children "should" be raised. This territory is densely populated with the easy psychological shortcuts of prejudice, stereotyping and because-I-say-so - and this despite an obsession with equality and diversity training that should of course highlight the dangers of such very human constructs. No wonder there are so many elephants wandering around the room.

• No professional dares to say that they think disabled parents must keep their children under lock and key as domestic slaves.
• No professional dares to say that they think the children of substance (mis)users must cut themselves on broken bottles or stick themselves with discarded needles hidden in the furniture.
• No professional dares to say that they think people with mental health problems must struggle to keep their children clean, fed, watered, loved and educated.
• No professional dares to say that they think religious parents must indoctrinate their children, and that indoctrination is abuse.

No, they don't dare to say anything of the sort out loud. Well, not often. They'd be disciplined faster than you can say equality and diversity and that could cost them their job, or even their career. So they don't voice their prejudices and stereotypes, and consequently nobody can challenge them, or educate them, or help them to see that trusting people - all people - to run their own affairs is THE starting point for a healthy society unless everyone wants to live under suspicion and fear of judgement against somebody else's arbitrary standards.

Until there is evidence of actual harm (and that bar should be set pretty darn high if we are to move from the realms of subjective personal choice to objective mutual agreement) then there is no place for mandatory intervention - unless you yourself are happy to be judged by criteria with which you vehemently disagree.

Because you might object to a child indoctrinated with creationism, but I also object to children indoctrinated with the terror of environmentalist extremism. You might see a child with an alcoholic mother, but I see a child whose mother enjoys a couple of glasses of wine a night. You think that disabled people shouldn't be "allowed" to have children, whereas I would be perfectly happy if judgemental authoritarians refrained from procreating. 

So perhaps we should confine our personal opinions to constructive debate?