We try to be strict parents but we fail

DR Martin Stephen, former high master of St Paul’s School, states that “the imposition of clear parent-child boundaries is crucial for a child’s development”. He is adamant that it is a vital part of a parent’s job to be unpopular. We must, he says, be prepared to be baddies, to be resented, vilified and defied.

If we don’t man up and set boundaries, our children won’t have the opportunity to rail against them. If we shirk our duties and cave in to our offsprings’ every demand, we do them a terrible disservice, deprive them of the chance to rebel and fail to provide them with a set of values to espouse or reject.

Of course Dr Stephen is right. How can our children grow up righteous, clean-living, non-smoking, respectful, screen-eschewing free-thinkers unless we lead them, by force if necessary, down the virtuous path?

By our actions they will know us, so we must be courageous, risk their opprobrium and confiscate their technology, stand over them while they write their Christmas thank-you letters, preach abstinence and advocate cold showers and the picking up of litter. We must be bad cop whether they despise us or not.

So far, so blindingly obvious, were it not for the fact that we’re not taking any notice. We can’t quite bear to shape up and adhere to Dr Stephen’s superlative advice. We know he’s right. We see that he is a beacon of common sense. Yet the ability to police, corral and harangue our children eludes us.

I hardly need to explain why. It’s because we can’t erase memories of our authoritarian parents barking orders, insisting we eat our greens/stand up straight/wear hideous dental braces/leave parties embarrassingly early/ sally forth in excruciatingly unfashionable attire/do the washing-up/leave the room whenever Bouquet Of Barbed Wire came on.

We hated it. We loathed being bossed about, restricted, suppressed, told to be seen and not heard, wash behind our ears, not to be big headed, think we were the centre of the universe or to have ideas above our station.

We vowed, usually while sent to our bedrooms “in disgrace”, never to subject our own children to a barrage of rules, regulations and barracking. We promised ourselves we would not become our children’s tormentors but instead their best friends.

We are stymied. We want to be strong, motivating, boundary-setting parents, yet loathe the very thought of morphing into our own feared progenitors. Ambivalence is paralysing us. HELP!