Research suggests that watching screens changes brain patterns – for good or ill – and that excessive watching can cause permanent damage. No real suggestion as what is Excessive [as in drink-driving where it seems that the number of units permitted was plucked from the air by someone with good intentions] but ‘too much’. As far as I know, this reflects a number of ideas but generally it is acknowledged that a little watching is OK – as in when Mummy needs to go to the toilet, or Daddy is desperate to see the Extra-time of a Cup Final. Sometimes.

The biggest problem with screens, as far as I can see, is that the more time anyone spends using a screen, the less time they have available for real-time social interaction. We have all now had experience of sitting next to a group of people who are all on phones or tablets doping something fascinating that they very occasionally share with one of the others. There are even adverts mocking this while pointing out that some Offers with some companies allow you to exploit this urge. One of the instructions given to older children filing into class at school is that they should put their phones away, and increasingly you see small children handing over their tablets as they go into the playground. One of the most terrifying adverts I saw recently was toys for Infants [literally pre-walking] which incorporated a place where the Carer could insert a Tablet to entertain the child while the parent did something else. And parents are very proud when their toddler can operate the thing!!!

It has all become more than notional for me just now as my first grandson lives abroad. I stayed with them for his first three months and miss him enormously. I am also reluctant to allow him to forget me: I don’t imagine that he will remember my face particularly, although I am more confident that he will know my sound and smell. I just hate the idea that he might forget the whole of me.

But there is Skype or FaceTime [or any of the others]. I can use a computer and we can have a face-to-face interaction. And it costs nothing. He doesn’t look at me for long, but it might be that he recognises me. He is not close enough to touch the screen. But I love that we can keep this going, that on one level at least, we are seeing and hearing each other. How do we keep this going and still keep him from realising all the other things that can be done? How can we restrict the time he is allowed on these machines? As he gets older, how do we keep up with all the  devious ways kids have discovered to evade the restrictions their parents impose?

Technology is a very mixed blessing – it feels very like Pandora’s box, in that having allowed one little sprite out of the box for whatever sound reason, it has been accompanied by any number of others – not all good.

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We agreed that this is where we all came from. It’s the thought of teenagers as babies that stops most of us wanting to hurt them when they are obnoxious. But it’s the thought of them as adults that keeps us firm when we ask them to do something and they don’t oblige. One mum had asked her daughter to clean the house – for money. She was keen to be paid, but didn’t much want to clean. So her mother moved on to use other people. And whenever daughter complains that she is short of money, her mother makes fake sympathy noises, and doesn’t give her any.

Last week I did a home visit to the mother of a seven year old. He is a very sweet little boy with glasses, and he is very keen to please. But at home his mum says he is VERY angry if she says No. He will smash up things, scream and shout and threaten all sorts. Mum says that she loves him, so she lets him have what he wants. So does yesterday’s mum who said she found it very hard when her nine year old son rolled on the floor by the till in the supermarket and wailed. She said several times during our interview that ‘he makes such a fuss’ that I…..

And I said that this is not helping him at all. Our job as parents is to make our children as independent of us as possible, so that when we die [or whatever] the children manage to get by without us. That means learning independence skills but it also means learning to be likable. No other adult will look at an obnoxious teenager and remember he was a cute baby and make allowances. No other adult will say ‘he was so sweet when he was little..’

Say something and mean it. Look dispassionately at your child and see him as others might. If you would find another child like that annoying, so will other adults. Far better that you teach him the right ways to behave, than that outsiders avoid him as a pain.

You have the power to enable your child to be the nicest person he can be, and, in that way, probably the happiest.

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What about the idea of Original Sin? Catholics seems to think that babies are born in the condition of sinfulness [inherited from Adam and his fall from Grace ] and that they must constantly atone for this. New-born babies may go to Purgatory before they are baptised. And of course, they are also liable to sin on their own behalf.

I have met a number of people who have done quite dreadful things, but none whom I thought was inherently Wicked. With all of them, I was able to trace patterns within their early years that had led to awful behaviour. [I have met people who killed people, but not people who murdered – as in intended to kill, and planned it. I have known people who raped and hurt people too].

So I told the researcher that I believed research showed that people were generally good – if they were allowed to be. And later he phoned me back to say that they were actually looking for a religious perspective not a psychological approach, but could they keep my name on the list.

And yesterday came news of research showing that babies are born kind and altruistic. A wonderful project in the U.S. has been doing experiments with babies from about 5 months to almost 24 months. The babies were held by a parent and shown simple videos. In the film, there were three shapes. One shape [perhaps the triangle] helped the second shape when it was in trouble. The third shape was mean. When the babies were given the helpful and mean toy to choose between, they always chose the good shape. Always. From the age of 5 months. As the babies got older, they became clearer in their thinking and one two year old actually smacked the naughty toy.

Babies are born altruistic. They want to help others, to be kind. When children and, later on, adults do unkind, malicious and hurtful things, they are reflecting things that have been done to them, intentionally or incidentally. These things happened and lead to consequences for all of us. Frightening, isn’t it!!!

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Of course I understand that parents do not necessarily stay in love, or even together, for ever. But the man and woman started a child together and remain parents for ever, whether they choose to acknowledge that or not. Every child is entitled to love and care and guidance, and most would prefer to receive this from their parents. When parents have separated shortly before or after the birth, the child is less affected by changes in the personnel around him or her, but when the child is able to remember that both parents used to live together, they are often seriously damaged by the fact that one parent has gone. They think the parent left because there was something wrong with the child; they  think that the parents doesn’t want to see them because they are horrid, or naughty, or mean or stupid. When the absent parent does that thing of making an arrangement and not turning-up, they feel doubly unwanted.

Have you ever seen the child sitting, dressed-up and excited as the clock ticks and time passes, until eventually the parent who is there suggests that they change out of their good clothes and go and play. The poor children often do not even complain, because a] it is possibly their fault and b] it will hurt the parent who is there even more. I have met children who were taken by train to meet a parent who just didn’t come. It’s not nice.

There is a lot of bitterness during a separation: things are often said unkindly, people are blamed, children may be brought in to the argument. But the children did not choose for this to happen. They should be a priority. They may be very badly damaged if you treat them as anything less. Surely they are more important than a CD collection, furniture or an ill-judged friendship.

The boy today was glowing between his parents. They do not live in the same house, they have new partners, but he is sure that they love him. It’s a good start.

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Well, I phoned a mum and asked whether talking to me had helped. She was polite but rather non-committal so I guess it wasnt a whole lot of help. I think it was largely because she didn’t adhere strictly to the behaviour schedule, but I had clearly failed to impress on her how important it is… And then to give her alternatives when she felt something wasn’t working.

You may recall that a number of us went on a course run by the charity Sibs which is all about supporting the siblings of children with disabilities. The thinking is that the sibling relationship is usually the longest relationship anyone has – you may have seen articles about brothers being reunited after sixty years and feeling wonderful. I remember my baby sister when she was less than a day old and that gives me some ownership, a peculiar relationship etc etc. Siblings are born into a family where they may have to compete for attention from adults [if not parents, grandparents], they are acknowledged as x’s sister or brother, look similar or, strangely, do not etc. So the sibling relationship is very important. And if one sibling has especial needs, the relationship is distorted.
It requires the tolerance of a saint to always be the second to be considered on trips, at special teas, etc. Will x behave well, enjoy, stay awake? who cares what the others want!!! It requires the talents of Solomon to be able to see the needs of all your children and to meet them fairly. Often, the parents can see that there might be a problem but lack the physical time to meet everyone’s needs.

Sibs advocates giving the sibs of children with disabilities a forum where they can have fun and moan about brothers and sisters with others who understand. It costs money but saves even more as children from families with disabilities can be very needy later – they may develop anxieties and depression, they may under-achieve, they may find it difficult to establish families of their own.

Following the course, colleagues in other towns were able to establish courses and the children who attend value them enormously. We couldn’t and it is a loss.
In an ideal world, there would be a weekly youth club which was available and children dipped in and out as they felt the need. There would be time for teachers to talk to children who needed to talk to them, there would be places to go. There is a lot of guilt associated with disabled children – for parents and for siblings, often for the disabled child himself. We need to give this more consideration.

p.s. did you read the research this morning that says we consistently underestimate the height of th eyoungest child in our family – and only the youngest. We are accurate for the rest. They suggest it is to ensure that we continue to nurture the youngest in a way that might feel unecessary if you were realistic about how big they are.

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I went to the meeting armed with quite a bit of research. All the experiments I could find, not so many but some, suggest that training in road safety is a good thing. If you set up scenarios about various conformations of roads, roundabouts, parked cars etc, children as young as 4/5 can learn to identify and notice dangers and explain to adults why that situation Is dangerous. This is a quite consistent finding, as is the second part. The second part is that although small children can identify dangers and remember why this is problematic even six months later, they can not translate this behaviour into their real world.

They know that a car may be reversing around the corner – they forget to look; they know that they need to step beyond theparked cars to see if anything is coming – they dont do it; they know that there might be a quiet vehicle like a bicycle – they forget to follow up the listening with a quick second look. Children know the rules, learn the rules but may not apply them. Their parents think they will.  It’s not so very different to my approach to Healthy Eating. I know What it is, Why I should do it and How, but somehow I dont. The children know how to stay safe, but forget to do it. A large part of this is developmental, as we are asking the kids to switch their attention from e.g. what they might play with their friend after school, to the dangers waiting round the corner. They can only do this when they are ready to do it.

One of my big concerns about this App is that  parents might feel that since their child has scored well at all the levels, he is safe to let out alone. Not true. It was reassuring to read that most parents do help their child to learn the stuff, and then repeat the new material when they walk together. It was not reassuring to read that hardly any parents spy on their children when they go out, and see how they manage their road safety when there is no-one there to remind them.

The take-away message is that children Can learn how to manage a whole range of traffic situations. Unfortunately, they usually forget in the heat of the moment. Learning road safety requires lots and lots of repetition, lots of checking, and an insistence on holding the hands of younger children, walking with and grabbing the hands of older ones, and a serious re-think of how you take the wheel of the car. As an adult, your job is to teach the children to take care and to be aware that they probably wont remember.

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Yesterday the papers featured a very zealous football coach. He coached Under-10s and had sent out an email saying he was not there so the boys could have fun playing– he was ‘only interested in winning’. He said parents who complained when their boy did not make the first team were ‘not doing their sons any favours’. Those who opposed him were ‘weak-minded’ and ‘think sport is about knitting’. In his email, the 42-year-old company director, who had coached the under 10s for more than two years, told parents: ‘I am only interested in winning. I don’t care about equal play time or any other communist view of sport. ‘Those that are not as good need to work harder or demonstrate more during training, or change sports.’

The BBC phoned to ask what I thought and said they were having difficulty in finding anyone who supported the Coach’s stand. This was a successful football team, he had 25 on the books and pointed out that most would not get a game as he plays to win. He might argue that his stance shows very positive results, but it seems fairly short-sighted. Even the biggest Clubs have Youth Teams they nurture, and boys have a habit of growing in spurts and developing physical skills in fits and starts. A friend remembers teaching Ian Wright [very famous and successful player, capped any number of times] when staff suddenly became aware that the boy had serious talent, at about 14.

More significant is the dampener this puts on all those kids who are willing and enthusiastic. There are very few individuals who are amazingly talented but a huge number who have something about them, a motivation that will take them a very long way. Genius is said to be ‘One per cent Inspiration, Ninety nine percent Perspiration’, and that seems to be true in all areas. A greater percentage of talent is wonderful, but, without the practice, nothing much will happen. So I am sure this is the wrong approach for the majority. The majority need the opportunity to play in a team, to learn all about playing with others, sharing, allowing others to star and take the goal kick, to realise that there can be glory in playing at left-back rather than scoring goals. And some of them will go on to do incredibly well in some area or another. Most will grow out of football – and maybe into another competitive sport, or maybe just into ‘knitting’!!!.

This statement also ignores the benefits gained by the star players. Life needs a lot more than stars. It needs workers who are valued for their effort. Stars need to learn that they are only able to Star if others allow it – talent is god-given and the Star’s role is particularly down to good fortune. I remember a boy who was dyslexic but ‘didn’t need to deal with his problems’ because he was great at football [he was 11]. And he was, and got a Premiership place at 17. During his first season, he broke his leg and was out of the game forever.

Everyone needs to learn how to be a star [maybe] but also how to support. Everyone needs to learn how to value the skills of others. Everyone has to learn that sometimes it is more important to play than to WIN – certainly at 10!!! – and generally more important to be kind than to be a winner.

The Coach was sacked immediately after the next match. But his team had won again.

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Back to Laney, What is a Mandala? Working on the Lewis Carroll proposition that a word means what you want it to mean, I use the word to mean a circle that reflects emotions.

In a jotter, each page should have an empty circle. Each person who is doing this, and in an ideal world, this will include parents and siblings, sits down together around the table. Each person chooses colours to reflect various emotions: happy, sad, angry, fed-up, excited etc. And they all sit down together before teatime and fill in an empty circle, each of them filling it in to show what sort of day they had. Mum might choose Blue to show Happy and could fill in a third as Blue while explaining that she had a happy day because she met up with Granny and they had coffee. Or perhaps some Yellow [Mum’s choice of colour for Sad] because she had heard that the car needed mending. That way, the children could be learning what makes someone happy, sad, angry etc and you might hear Laney say that she is colouring a lot of the day in green [her choice for angry] because the teacher told her friend off and it wasn’t fair. Or Pink [her choice for happy] because she had been told ‘well done’ for her writing, and her friend had shared her sweets, or it was hot dogs for lunch. The Mum looks at what the child is doing and would say something like ‘that’s a lot of pink, it looks like you had a good day?’ or ‘my goodness, all that Green, what happened?’ so that Laney [and all the others involved] get to tell what actually happened and how it made them feel. Sometimes this is a personal emotion, but sometimes it will reflect something else like being cross because they couldn’t have P.E. because another class was using the Gym.

This is a super exercise for many reasons. It allows for everyone to sit down together to do something that will not be ‘judged’. It allows everyone to talk about feelings in an unemotional way – these are feelings that aren’t expressed while you are feeling mad or very unhappy. It allows the adults to explain how they feel about things and that sometimes things make them very sad or angry too and also to tell how they deal with them. So although dad was furious when someone scratched his car, he didn’t go and beat up the driver….. It allows the whole family to share what is going on.

Best of all, perhaps, it allows you to see that school is more than the very last experience that meant your child came home in tears. This is really important. So often, when you meet your child after school and see that they are unhappy, you ask Why. The child tells you of the cause of this unhappiness and as a parent you go into Support Mode. It is too easy to forget that the child has had a long day made up of several parts. By doing the Mandala exercise, you can have a much more realistic idea of what school is like. And if it is genuinely awful, you have a very good justification for doing something about it. If you choose to do this, just do it for maybe 6 weeks and then have a break. Save the jotters though – it makes a lovely and accurate diary of what was happening at that time.

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