The judge is right: we parents must lay down the law (even if your kids think you’re a vile old cow)

OF COURSE Judge Sir James Munby, president of the High Court’s Family Division, is right! Of course parents should tell children where to get off, and sometimes ‘make them do things they do not want to do’.

It’s hardly a revolutionary idea: the only wonder is that it seems necessary to state it.

I do not know the rights and wrongs of the particular case which provoked the comments from our most senior family law judge (one in which teenage girls kept refusing to visit their father, possibly influenced by the mother; it sounds messy).

But you can’t fault his general observation that ‘there are many things which they ought to do that children may not want to do or even refuse to do: going to the dentist, going to visit some “boring” elderly relative, going to school, doing homework or sitting an examination — the list is endless.

‘The parents’ job . . . is to get the child to do what it does not want to do’.

Correct. You might wonder why he needs to tell us, but clearly his work brings him to conclude that we’re a pretty wimpy set, culturally speaking.

You have only to compare the expectations and images in two similar, both very funny, family sitcoms on our screens: in the BBC’s Outnumbered, the middle-class parents are pushovers, liberal, hand-wringing victims of the rudest children imaginable: outgunned and defeated.

Rebel

In Modern Family — ‘ the world’s most watched comedy’ — the Dunphy parents from California, with kids a similar age, make a point of enforcing housework and manners, and grounding the rebel teens when required.

The judge invokes reasoning and argument as a means of keeping children in line, but also confiscating mobiles and gadgets, grounding and ‘ threats falling short of brute force’.

What he does not, perhaps, admit is how diabolically tough a job this is. A senior judge, after all, spends his days surrounded by dutiful and tidily dressed clerks, colleagues and respectful pupils. None of them are very likely to shout ‘I hate you, you’ve ruined my life!’ and howl at him that they never asked to be born and wish they were dead.

Male legal personnel do not routinely slam doors and shout ‘W***er!’ when told to wipe their feet; their female colleagues do not storm out of m’lud’s chambers dressed like hookers and refuse to answer frantic texts at midnight.

And so what if they did? The boss hasn’t got adorable baby pictures of them in his wallet. He could just replace them.

Parenthood, on the other hand, is the most challenging of managerial and leadership roles, even if it is also the most fascinating and rewarding.

Handling a wilful toddler can be like being the roadie for a drug- crazed rock band, and the simplest shopping trip with your very own Violet Elizabeth Bott can be like chaperoning a fading Sicilian prima donna on her fifth farewell tour.

When they are a bit older, reasoning and bargaining start to work, and a happy family creates a solid sense of routine, rules and civility. But then come the teenage years, and it’s the Terrible Twos all over again, with a whole new range of disagreements.

Fine: it’s a necessary part of growing towards independence, and no one wants children so nervous and cowed that they never cause a stink at all.

But curbing and controlling those angry moments is a real job: you can’t resign as a parent — you don’t want to anyway. And legally, as the judge says, there is an ‘obligation to take all reasonable steps to ensure that a child does what it ought to be doing, and does not do what it ought not to be doing’.

It’s more daunting than ever these days, when a world of lifestyles and role models is offered minute-by-minute to children on TV and online, so parents are no longer the main window into the adult world.

In some ways that is mind-broadening, but it makes family discipline harder than ever. Even at ten years old, children are comparing their parents’ values with everyone from Spider-Man to Russell Brand.

Hug

One friend was informed by her young daughter during a row about lipstick that she would rather have Kylie Minogue as her mum: luckily, Mum just said: ‘You should be so lucky, lucky, lucky’, and gave the little monster a hug.

This urge to upset your mother isn’t just modern: when I was six, I invented ‘real parents’ who lived in a hedge. If I was in a mood, I frequently ran away from home, often as far as that very hedge.

Luckily, my mother had three other children to deal with and ignored me. She knew I’d be back.

Battles over wearing a foul red velvet dress to visit relatives were stormier, but I knew deep down that in the end I’d have to do it. For there is, for children at any age, a certain security in knowing where the boundaries are.

Even the stroppiest teen doesn’t really believe that he or she has all the answers. And as long as the hugs, the obvious dedication and listening and love are all there, you accept the boundaries. While, of course, sulking.

But goodness, it’s tiring invoking ordinary discipline — manners, bedtime, homework, washing-up, switching off the telly, no phones at the table, all that.

It’s even more exhausting today, when to afford a home and food, both parents probably have to work. If you’ve been dealing with problems all day, and travelled home squashed on a bus or train with grumpy strangers, the last thing you want is a fight with the small (or hulking teenage) people you love best.

How to do it? There are volumes of advice (good grief, I wrote some), but honestly, the most useful thing is to know your child as an individual, and judge when to crack the whip (not literally), when to persuade, and when to ease off.

Tyrants

My eldest went though a phase at four of shouting ‘You poo-face!’ and storming out when thwarted. With an older child, you’d chase after him for an apology (very important, by the way, to apologise yourself when you’ve been a cow to them — otherwise how will they learn?).

What was happening at four, however, was a child accepting a rule, stopping the bad behaviour, and letting off steam. So we ignored it, and all was cosy minutes later.

But it is fatally easy to give in at the wrong moments, especially in a small family, and let children become whining, demanding, hyper- entitled tyrants. Because you love them, because a smile is a delight, because it’s just so exhausting to keep saying ‘No’. Or because (fatally) you think it’s possible to be ‘friends’ with these half-finished people on an equal basis. It will be, but probably not until they hit voting age.

One of the saddest remarks I’ve heard on the subject was from a woman recently taken to court for letting her daughters play truant: ‘I’ve learned that I’m their mum, not their friend’. Pity it took a custodial sentence to produce that insight.

You pick up good tips, though, as time goes on. One of my favourites was claiming I had ‘whine filters’ in my ears and actually couldn’t hear anything in a whiney voice. Young children half-believe this.

Once you force yourself to sound reasonable, oddly enough your demands automatically get more so. Just beware of the smaller, literal-minded child who might come at you with a Fisher-Price toolbox to remove the whine-filters by force. It can happen.

So yes, the judge has got a point. Children need to be parented — and even if it’s bloody hard work, they’ll thank you for it in the end.

Libby Purves is the author of parenting books How Not To be A Perfect Mother and Nature’s Masterpiece.