Make your Family like the one from the Poster

Fortuitous article in the Times

Following my remarks about that sickening poster, the Times have published a manual detailing how to make your family be just like the one from the poster - the family that does mistakes, and loud really well etc. Conversely, as sane persons, we may read the recommendations and do the opposite in order to avoid becoming like that family.

The article is about Raising Boys. Firstly we should point out that in England we BRING UP children we do not raise them. The Times has forgotten that it is published in England for English people. Raising of children is something carried out in America I believe. Next, it is a refreshingly sexist article that acknowledges that boys are different from girls. It is quite rude about boys though, saying that they are impulsive, pugnacious and more muscly than girls and the muscliness means there is less of their brainpower available for thinking and other clever stuff. (The brain is all used up with controlling their extra muscles). 

Here is what the Times thinks you (the parents) should do:

You must partake of what they call 'think-throughs', and 'descriptively praising' and 'reflectively listening to' your children. You must play 'The Go Game'. A typical Go Game activity is as follows: 'When I say 'Go' walk round the table twice, then sit down and tell me the name of 4 animals.' The child can only do it when you say 'go'. Switch roles for fun (sic).    Good God.

The boys' father must rumple their hair at every opportunity, sit next to them when they are playing with Lego, and wake the boys on schoolday mornings by sitting on their beds and chatting. Er... real boys are NOT amenable to this sort of thing on schoolday or any other mornings. "Get away from me you Freak" is the likely reaction to such overtures. 

Boys must be forced to shift their allegiance from their mothers to their fathers. Eh?? The parents are lucky if there is the slightest friendliness shown at all in my experience let alone any personal allegiances. 

The Importance of Sport: According to the article the father MUST ensure that the boy is good at football because all boys need to be good at football or no-one will like them. The father must practise playing football with the boy every day and not use words like 'Brilliant!' but say inane things such as 'You stopped that ball,' and other statements of the obvious. These are 'descriptive praise' and you should make such comments all the time. I would imagine the result of this would be that the child will stop listening to you altogether because it will realise that you are a loony who never has anything worthwhile to say. According to the Times though, the child will internalise it ('it'? what?) and begin to reinvent themselves. 'Reinvent themselves' is a very irritating and meaningless phrase which should be avoided.

Schedule playfighting for certain safe places and for times when an adult is present, says the article. Look, you are missing the point. Fighting does not work like that, and scheduling it can not be implemented. Sorry. Also do not use the term playfighting. All fights are to be undertaken in full earnest. The article does surprisingly admit that your children are going to be constantly hitting each other so don't bother having rules against it. On the other hand it recommends saying 'You didn't laugh when your brother made a mistake' as one of the descriptive praise observations which shows that the writer failed to have an effective think-through about this. It would be viewed as a challenge in most families: Hey everyone let's all laugh at our sibling. 

Bribe the children with Screen Time (allowing use of computer). This teaches them bribery. Excellent. 

Pretend you understand how they are feeling ("Gosh it's frustrating isn't it when you have to finish something you're enjoying" instead of "GET OFF THE COMPUTER THIS INSTANT YOU DISOBEDIENT CHILD") This makes them feel heard and attended to (apparently) and is an example of reflective listening. No. In fact it is condescending and will make them quite rightly loathe you.

If you have got a fidgetty child you should tell the child to make a fist and squeeze hard for 5 seconds. Cured! Also teach the children to sit on their hands. And - this is REALLY strange - train them to stop moving and freeze on a signal from you, eg. a hand held up palm out. Use this at unexpected times and give them permission to use the signal on you at designated times. By this means you will be able to establish your family's reputation as a bunch of utter weirdoes.

Read to your son even after he is perfectly capable of reading for himself and no longer thinks it's cool. (When did being able to read constitute something cool? It's just normal, like having 2 legs or a cat, or performing simple interpretive dance moves (not really. Interpretive dance is NEVER normal.))

Stand over your child while he does his homework. Patronisingly ask him what the teacher wants from him in the homework (this is a think-through) and keep interrupting him to give descriptive praise eg. 'You are writing slowly and neatly!' Actually in real life it is more help if you just sigh angrily when he gets something wrong, criticise his punctuation and spelling and tell him he is going to end up in the gutter if he doesn't try harder.

The article suddenly ends there, but there will be a whole BOOK of this advice coming out on 12th February, publ. Yellow Kite, £14.99. I shouldn't buy it if I were you unless you will be happy for your household to Do Hugs and Do Family etc.