Competitive parenting is a tricky business. One minute your toddler’s throwing a tantrum in a Mandarin lesson, the next they are all grown-up and rejecting Mozart in favour of One Direction. The new series of Mariella Frostrup’s Bringing Up Britain on Radio 4 asks what parents can do to boost their child’s IQ.
Four experts debate the weapons of helicopter parenting, from Kumon classes for preschoolers to force-feeding children fish oils. Just hearing what parents are supposed to be doing to raise a mini-Einstein is enough to bring on the angst. It’s just as well the panel prescribes a simpler life. “Nature has equipped us pretty well to learn,” argues education consultant Sue Palmer. “Children are not some project that you are having to make work.”
Purveyor of hard facts Dr Stuart Ritchie talks a lot of common sense: let your child enjoy music because it’s great, not because it might raise their IQ. “The effect of parenting on intelligence, by the time you’re an adult, has almost entirely washed away,” he says. That’s the kind of talk that could shred a phonics flashcard.
Frostrup is the perfect devil’s advocate, keeping the debate going as she covers a lot of ground. The advice given will have the more laidback listener nodding: feed your kids, let them play outside, read to them, talk to them, then put them to bed. Oh, and back off.
Newfangled beliefs like this didn’t exist in the era when Rod Stewart prowled the stage in leopardskin leggings. The only man who can legally refer to certain sections of the population as “blondes” is an affable guest on Radio 2’s Johnnie Walker Meets …
Both 70, Walker and Stewart are old mates, so nothing’s out of bounds. They chuckle over the thought of Stewart’s ex Britt Ekland not being too keen on him. Still, she introduced him to makeup. “I’m Phyllis and Elton’s Sharon,” he reminds Walker. “I’m proud of my feminine side.” He also exposes his emotional side, touching on his heartbreak when he split up with supermodel Rachel Hunter and learning to sing again after thyroid cancer
Bagpipes and reggae punctuate some of his newer tracks played here, so skip those to get to Rod the Mod classics like Maggie May and The Faces’ Stay With Me. But chatwise, there’s never a dull moment.
