It’s time to give the PC brigade the big kiss-off
ILOATHE giving high fives. Maybe it’s because I’m lefthanded and always seem to be out of sync with the other person, or it might be that I’m British and therefore instinctively suspicious of anything originating in American high school culture (see also: cheerleading; proms; pronouncing the word clique ‘click’).
I imagine both of my grandmothers would have felt the same. If I’d attempted to give either of my Glaswegian grannies a high five, God rest their souls, they would probably have tried to shake my hand, or put a sweetie in it. Yet, nevertheless, some bright spark at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has come up with guidance suggesting that instead of kissing their grannies, children should simply high five them.
Furthermore, children of three to four years old should, apparently, be taught that ‘being touched is their own choice, not another’s’.
Oh for goodness sake. While the message that children’s bodies are their own is important, there is a huge difference between kissing your Granny goodbye and being inappropriately touched. At three years old, children are still trying to work out how to pronounce their own names. Is trying to teach them lessons about ‘touching’ really going to do anything other than scare them?
At a time when the government is behaving more like an overbearing nanny than ever, elbowing into people’s families in order to demand that children do not kiss their grandparents feels like a Mary Poppins too far.
But there’s another side to this. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes children should be forced to do things they don’t want to do. Children need to learn that everything is not sunshine and roses and getting it their own way, otherwise, they will grow up to think that the world should pander to their every whim and throw tear-stained tantrums when it doesn’t. And, frankly, there are enough members of the Trump family around to do that already.
This week, Prue Leith, 78 years old and a granny herself – one who I’m darned sure tells her grandchildren to give her a kiss – remarked that today’s children are indulged and given too much choice.
‘They are consulted about what they’d like to eat, what colour mug they’ll have their apple juice in,’ she complained. ‘They are patiently negotiated with on the subject of bedtime or TV. Mostly, they get their way.’
She is right, of course. Today’s children are little Lords and Ladies, ruling their households with iron baby-fists as they demand everything from later bedtimes to a never-ending supply of organic apple rice cakes.
Leith says she put her children to bed at 7pm so she and her first husband Rayne Kruger could have a drink. Quite right, too. The key to a happy child is a relaxed parent, not an exhausted one.
As for today’s youngsters, I can’t help but imagine what sort of adults these children will turn into. The type, I would imagine, who won’t give their own grannies a kiss.