by Kathleen Lane

The fact that I am a grumpy old person and rant about parents does not mean that I think I was a perfect parent. Indeed I often wish that I could have a second chance at child rearing, knowing what I now know and at last having achieved the maturity to put the child’s needs first.

We all know that for adults strange and unusual places can create unwanted levels of stress, as can times like Christmas holidays, when family members are forced into each other’s company for longer than normal periods of time. Add in excesses of food and drink and niggling worries about how to pay for it all and the recipe for disaster cooks up nicely.

From times I have spent people watching I have decided that holidays are equally stressful for young children in particular – although the extent of their money worries usually involve who can be persuaded to pay up for the next treat, rather than the size of the credit card bill.

How many times, in happy holiday locations, do you hear children wailing? How can adults who have presumably spent a lot of time and money getting there in order to give their offspring a treat get it so wrong? Could they be trying too hard to replicate idealised memories of their own childhoods? Could it be the same as at Christmas and that they are thrust into direct contact with each other, perhaps in a cramped tent, or caravan, or other strange holiday let, without all the conveniences and electronic child-minders of home, resulting in short tempers all round?

I suppose some adults who are under undue pressure at work could also be suffering from adrenaline withdrawal. Certainly there seems to be more motivation to say a loud ‘NO’ to children, when there is no obvious reason not to say ‘YES’, or to say ‘Don’t’ when ‘Do’ (something positive) would actually be far better.

We also hear TV gurus telling us about the benefits of eating together and talking to each other more, face to face round the table, over a shared meal. It would seem that some parents do not think that whilst on holiday is a good time to start honing this skill.

Certainly, some adults do not try too hard to engage with their children over meals out, but do expect the rest of us to tolerate some pretty shocking behaviour. One evening last summer two of us went for a quiet meal in a Greek restaurant near a popular family resort in Norfolk.

The ethos of the restaurant is to provide an intimate, civilised, leisurely experience, until everyone has been fed and the music and dancing can begin. Two holiday making families with two children each met up at the restaurant, obviously by prior arrangement. One of the adults announced that the children would all sit together so that the adults could talk. The older generation proceeded to agree on mezethes, which involves a sampling of every course on the menu and takes a long time.

One father asked the waiter if they did ‘anything else’, because the children did not like eating ‘foreign muck’. The waiter’s father who is a superb Greek chef graciously agreed to produce four portions of chicken and chips. We were part way into our own quiet enjoyment when we found we had the pleasure of their company at a table next to us. The chicken and chips arrived with the adults first samplings and were dispatched with speed, leaving the children to get bored, squabble, mess about with the candle on the table and finally get really bored and wander around the rest of the restaurant, getting in the way of the long-suffering staff and interfering with the candles on other tables.

At one point one of the hapless children was told to apologise to us, for blowing candle smoke all over us. I drew breath to suggest that the apology was rightfully due from the clueless adults in the party, but I got fixed with a well known ‘Do not start World War Three here’ look and we took the coward’s way out and left as soon as we could.

Another piece of parental behaviour on holiday, which fills me with horror is the lack of supervision of children, especially on the beach and in the sea. Despite numerous tragedies in the sea and highly publicised abductions every year, even tiny tots can be seen wandering on our holiday beaches with no responsible adult in sight, or apparently interested in their whereabouts. As a supporter of the local Lifeboat I take a keen interest in the number and type of ‘shouts’ each season. Too many are for unsupervised children drifting out to sea on inflatables.

I also watched the recent TV programme about the summer season for the Lifeguards, Lifeboat and Rescue Helicopter at a busy south coast resort. I was stunned to hear the Lifeguards say that on one day during filming they had lost count of the number of ‘lost children’ calls. It was also disturbing to hear the helicopter crew saying that it was difficult to locate someone in trouble in the sea because of the number of abandoned inflatables bobbing about out there.

I have experienced one mother curling up to sleep at the top of the beach, whilst her naked two-year-old tried to find someone to play with. I have also known other parents go off to the pub, assuming that the nice friendly lady would still be playing with her grandchildren and their offspring when they got back.

One staggering piece of parental short-coming on holiday was highlighted on a local TV channel last week, when it was announced that a child had got into the baggage handling mechanism at a busy airport. Allegedly he had climbed over a closed check-in desk, gone through the black flaps, been put through an X-ray machine and hurtled along the conveyor belt with the suitcases until he was shunted to one side with other large and unusually shaped baggage, all while the rest of his oblivious family was in a check-in queue, waiting to jet off on a happy holiday. A somewhat stunned airport official appeared before the TV cameras to remind parents that airports are dangerous places and their children should be kept under control. At last rocket science for the masses on day-time TV!

Despite my somewhat soured view of today’s parents I do have some sympathies with the many pressures which some face. I am a fervent subscriber to the view that it takes a whole village to rear a child and I accept totally that in our complex society of serial monogamy and varied nuclear arrangements, families often need help. Sadly however, I am also very conscious that there can be dangers in intervening uninvited with other people’s children. I have a friend of over eighty years of age who insists on stopping to speak to children when we are out and about. She does not understand my suggestions that we keep walking and I don’t really want to explain to her that parents are looking at her with suspicion.

I had to heed my own advice when I came across a curly-headed little angel last week, not crying, nor howling in rage or frustration, but simply sobbing – really deep down to the soles of his tiny trainers. His mother was busy with a younger child in a buggy and an adult male was hovering nearby. Although I am not overly sentimental about children, I had a strong urge to hug the child, to try to offer some comfort. What on earth could have happened to cause this depth of distress? At the beginning of the Bank Holiday weekend they did not look set for a particularly happy holiday.

I wonder, would World War Three have started if I had said to his mother, “This is the most precious gift you will ever be given and to raise him to be a fine man may be the most difficult task you will face, but you only get one chance to do it well”? I am sure that even in the less pressured times of the seventies I would not have received this message well from a passing stranger, whilst chiding my sons.

My last thought on the matter is that in view of the numbers of happy grandparents I see with happy grandchildren, I wonder if perhaps they are the only adults who should take children on holidays?

At Sunday School they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Tommy, a child in !the kindergarten class, seemed especially intent when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs. Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and asked, "Tommy, what's the matter?" Little Tommy responded, "I have a pain in my side. I think I'm gonna have a wife"