Think Of The Children...

[Catalogue Trousers]

Okay, I've just today seen an advert for some wonderful new BBC early-learning product called Muffty or something like that. Basic idea: teaching your kids a second language (from French to Mandarin Chinese!) from a very early age. All sounds good and laudable.

Until you hear how the Stepford Wife fronting the ad repeatedly sells it: as something which will give your child the COMPETITIVE EDGE which they'll need to beat the pack in that deadly dangerous tomorrow.

That left a very sour taste in my mouth. I mean, I've nothing against parents wanting to give their children those good old "chances that I never had": equally, I've nothing against kids who find the idea of speaking/writing other languages so interesting that they're keen to start doing so at a young age.

What I am worried about is the sheer feeling that it's not so much about equipping one's kids, as having something else with which to make the poor little sods all the more of an accessory for some self-styled "supermum" or "superdad" to boast about and - rather than concern themselves with what the kid really wants - not-so-subtly yell to the World "look what a GREAT PARENT I am!"

On a more comical note, I can't help but wonder what giving your child the COMPETITIVE EDGE from a very young age might do. Gee! Little Timmy's only eight years old but he can already bench-press twice his body-weight, shoot the wings off a fly at fifty metres and rip the throat out of a wolf with his bare teeth. He also understands algebra, Blue Ribbon cookery, nuclear physics and can read Nietszche in the original German. In fact, he's been muttering to himself a lot about "I am the Superman" and has started to ask Mummy and Daddy why they're so useless and inferior, and has shown a great deal of interest in the build-an-atomic-bomb pages on the Internet which he can now hack as though he were the little black box from the film Sneakers, that's how COMPETITIVE he is...

I want any kids which I might have to have a good education and a good life. I don't much fancy the idea of making them snotty little ubermenschen with little but scorn for their clueless Dad, or adults in general.

Are too many parents pushing their children too hard, too soon? How many of them really want to do so for the child's sake, rather than for that of their own egos? What does the forum think?

[Emma Raducanu]

Parent's snobbery usually manifests itself through performance of some sort. Tap Dance or something no one else gives a shit about.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'm sure this is only a problem if you're in the PTA or attend regular community events with other parents whose child attend the same school as yours.

If like most people you make very little effort in these concupiscent wastes of time that some people seem to derive pleasure from, then you don't really have anything to compete against, and can be happy that your child is developing naturally.

[extradave]

When I have kids, I will just sit back and let my genes do the talking ...