ARE you convinced you’ve got a brilliant parenting style, when really it’s just some bollocks you read in a Sunday supplement? Read our guide and find out.
‘Having mature agreements’
What you think: Little Jack tidying his bedroom for six weeks in return for a Playstation game is a great way of teaching him about responsibility.
Reality: A chaotic system of bribery involving sweets and toys in which your children will come to believe everything they do must involve a reward and they can demand £20 for doing a poo.
‘Encouraging their creativity’
What you think: Your relaxed parenting style will cause your child to become a famous writer and you’ll be showered with champagne and kudos at their book launches.
Reality: You take your children to restaurants, fail to control them in any way and get sloshed while they run around calling other diners ‘paedos’ despite having no idea what it means.
‘Treating them like adults’
What you think: Talking to them about adult things and involving them in decisions will make them wonderfully mature.
Reality: A lifetime of therapy after you explained daddy’s inability to give mummy an orgasm and took them to see the family dog being put down.
‘Hands-off parenting’
What you think: Encouraging their independence means your kids are going to be bold, self-reliant adults, probably round-the-world yachtspersons!
Reality: You mostly remember to feed them but they spend a lot of time subsisting on Haribo and using their iPad to visit the darkest recesses of the internet. Would involve social services if you didn’t have a Volvo.
