HAVING just broken up a fight over the tea table, scraped all the uneaten fresh veg into the bin and ordered the youngest off to bed for the umpteenth time, I came across something that looked like it could, possibly, be the answer to my prayers.

Lo and behold, a parenting leaflet from the National Association of Head Teachers and the Charity Family Action, which appears to tell me where I’m going wrong and, more importantly, how to do it right. So, instead of unplugging the 15-year-old’s headphones and shouting in his ear that he needs to do his homework, then barking at the 18-year-old to throw his smelly socks in the wash before I enter his filthy lair of a bedroom and attempt to fumigate, I sit down and have a read.

Someone is shouting that they’ve lost their gym kit and it’s all my fault. Another tells me I haven’t filled in that form giving permission for them to go on an important school trip the next morning : “I definitely gave it to you four weeks ago. You have to pay £150 and I need a packed lunch too.”

But I ignore them all, because I want to absorb some words of wisdom from these parenting experts, who must know something I don’t.

But what I read in the pamphlet ‘Your Child’s Wellbeing: A Short Guide For Parents’ is far from the answer to my prayers: “Encourage children to exercise vigorously for 30 minutes,” it says, going on to suggest that we could go for a bicycle ride as a family or play tag in the park together.

It’s not exactly the sort of information I was hoping for.

Like a parody of one of those old, black and white government infor-mation films, where a patronising, plummy-voiced man in a suit states the bleeding obvious to an audience he has clearly decided are little better than nincompoops, it informs: “Advise your children that they should take a shower and use deodorant.”

There can’t be many people with teenage sons who really need to be told this.

Other tips include encouraging children to eat a balanced diet, including introducing them to exotic ingredients from other parts if the world while getting them to bake and help prepare family meals. Presumably this is after the bike ride and before you rush out to play tag together.

We must also show them their views and opinions are valued.

What? Even when your son insists that, in his opinion, he should be allowed to stay up half the night playing a FIFA game on the Xbox and get a pet snake for his birthday?

The ‘experts’ also inform us that we should: “Tell your child that you love them every day.” But if you are only doing this because a leaflet tells you so, that’s a little disturbing, isn’t it?

Most parents find the job difficult enough and, while few of us are perfect, we do the best we can. The last thing we need is to be talked to as if we are totally incapable.

For those who do need more help, sadly, it’s a problem that can’t simply be addressed by a patronising pamphlet like this landing on the doormat.

SOMEONE made the mistake of asking my 20-year-old nephew if he had a girlfriend recently: “No. They’re too much trouble and they use up all your money,” he replied.

ON my way home from a funeral in Ireland I called at the shops on my way back from the airport and phoned home: “Is there anything we need?” I asked 11-year-old Albert. “A dog,” he replied, without skipping a beat.

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