Children.

Apparently David Cameron plans on calling for all parents to attend parenting classes. "In the end," says he, "getting parenting and the early years right isn't just about the hardest-to-reach families it's about everyone." It's true that children don't come with an instruction manual. Neither do puppies but it is probably easier to find a nice, straightforward, easy to read how-to-look-after-your-puppy book than it is to find a similar tome about child-rearing. So maybe, just maybe, he has a point. 

As a rule the owner of a new puppy is not usually exhausted after giving birth and so has more energy to put into studying what to do. And you can more easily take time off, putting the puppy in his nicely equipped puppy cage and going out for a drink. Now, I know there are people who would say that you really should have a babysitter for your puppy as well, so he doesn't get traumatised in your absence, but it's not the same as popping your tiny baby in his carry cot and leaving him on his own while you go out for the evening. 

And when you think about the kind of training that the best professional nannies receive, then maybe it is a little unrealistic to think that new parents instinctively know how to look after children. 

Coincidentally, before reading the news item about parenting classes, I had been talking to my daughter about one of the children in her class. This child is a physically large nine year old who mostly does what he is told in school, perhaps a little clumsy, perhaps not terribly well co-ordinated, perhaps a bit distracted on occasion, probably not the brightest button in the box but not a major problem. His mother, however, thinks he should be statemented as being somewhere in the autistic spectrum. She has a litany of things he does and doesn't do at home, all of which indicate to her that he is a problem child. Only after a long parent-teacher consultation did the mother concede that her child was actually not a problem at school but she still feels he needs support if some kind, which in fact he already receiving according to my daughter. 

It may be that this mother needs some training in parenting but how do you make her understand this without making her feel that you are patronising or even insulting her. Even David Cameron agrees that it will be necessary to incentivise parents to learn how to do it. "I believe we now need to think about how to make it normal - even aspirational - to attend parenting classes." 

Then there are the children getting no parenting at all in refugee camps like the one in Calais. I was reading about the case of a 15 year old Afghan, Massud, who suffocated in the back of lorry as he tried to get into the UK. He got fed up of waiting for someone to help him process his claim to join his sister in the UK and took matters into his own hands in the period between Christmas and the New Year, with fatal consequences. 

And yet, it turns put that he was one of a list of unaccompanied minors in the camp who were forming part of a test case, a legal challenge against the Home Office which will be heard on January 18th. He was handpicked as a desperate case, a vulnerable child who deserved to be reunited with a family member already in the UK. I wonder if anyone told Massud that this was going on. 

He was 15, still a child but quite old enough to understand the processes that were taking place. Children need to be talked to. Had someone told him, he might have lived to find put the results of the challenge! 

Post script on a lighter note. After my rant about sportswear yesterday, here is a link to a cartoon called "Things I have learnt from ... taking up jogging" by Simone Lia.