A Feedback Folly

There are numerous things that many British people have an instinctive and immediate dislike for and one of those is feedback: both the giving and receiving of it. In societies that prize directness and speaking one’s mind telling someone exactly what you think of them and their performance comes as naturally as the leaves on the trees. 

For the British, however, there is all the labour of circumlocution and its interpretation. The safest place to communicate these oblique messages is, of course, in writing. Face to face encounters require command of the body and voice so that they do not betray what the words are so carefully designed to conceal or merely imply. 

So it is that parent teacher meetings represent a peculiarly fraught rite of passage for new parents. Not just face to face feedback but a reckoning of parenting skill and endeavour. My wife, being German, had much less anxiety than I about how our inaugural post-Covid 5 minutes would go. 

Inevitably the anticipation proved far worse than the actuality although it takes a peculiarly Trunchbullish teacher to say anything unkind about a 6 year old. Instead, we were gratifyingly assured about how empathetic our eldest was. Indeed, we were told that if any other child was sad or the subject of unkind words or actions our lad was the first to tell teacher. 

‘So he’s a grass, you mean?’ I said. 

‘No that’s not what I mean’, replied the teacher with a forbearing smile, while my wife kicked me under the table. 

One thing I did note was that rather like a patient leaving a consultation the most important thing is said the moment they are walking out the G.P.’s door; it was the teacher’s parting words that really conveyed where we needed to be putting in extra work. 

Teachers are dispassionate judges of our children’s characters whose assessment helps wrest us from parental indulgence or, more rarely these days, severity. Sometimes teachers can be blessed with striking powers of foresight. Consider the Eton Master in College’s unyielding analysis of Boris Johnson’s character. 

Everything he became he already was. And by way of aside ask yourself this curious little question – how ever did that prescient critique of him make its way into the public domain? Surprisingly (or not) the answer seems to be that the family approved its publication. 

Anyway, back to feedback. It’s one of the features of reaching adulthood that feedback is delivered to the person and not the parent. This is a necessary evolution. The mere idea of your boss or, still more terrifyingly, your spouse providing feedback about you to your parents will likely seem completely and utterly bizarre although it would make for some very lively discussion around the Sunday roast. If you're feeling particularly provoking perhaps try it some time?

Father Christmas KC

 

My wife is from Berlin and German Kinder leave their boots out on 5th December to wake up to presents left in them by Saint Nikolaus for Nikolaustag. I'm a Brit and Santa's sleigh needs no explaining. My entire step-family are Italian and the bambini there await the arrival of La Befana on Epiphany Eve who is a benign witch like figure who, you guessed it, doles out gifts.

If my children have any wit at all it won't be long before they enthusiastically embrace their tripartite cultural heritage in legitimate expectation of a Trifecta of present receiving. What all of these visitations have in common is the threat of a sanction for bad behaviour, usually coal instead of sweets, although the Germans, as usual, take it to the next level by having some absolutely terrifying beast called Krampus turn up to frighten the living daylights out of little miscreants.

I suspect, in reality, vanishingly few children are in fact spirited away in a barrel rucksack by a devil bearing birch. There is though, to my mind at least, something infantile (and not in a good way) about the expression 'naughty or nice'. If Christmas and Santa specifically is about only receiving the whole thing becomes an exhausting exercise in entitlement.

As the above photograph demonstrates we gave into commercial and cultural pressures to arrange a visit TO rather than FROM Father Christmas. Being made to wait with a score of other families on hard chairs in a corridor as if for a visit to the dentist slightly detracted from the magic. That said I have to give this incarnation full points for his real beard. I want the reassurance of knowing that Santa has been in training since at least the start of October (although the magnolia walls were slightly more North Hampstead than North Pole).

Where I do feel that he really fell short was with his lack of rigour with my children. His examination of their conduct and exploits in 2022 would have embarrassed a first day Bar School student. No details, no dates. No more really than a completely unevidenced assertion that they had been good boys, elicited by a leading question too, for shame. And he didn't even call the best evidence of their conduct when I was standing right there.

Laboured legal assertions aside I do think it would be nice if Santas might think to enquire of children what generous thing they intend to do for another is before the inevitable superhero tat is handed over. Certainly that's what I intend to do when the salt has finally taken over from the pepper and the dad bod has been promoted to a granddad bod.

Wherever you are I wish you, your family and loved ones a very happy Christmas.

Not so hot on cool

I am a big fan of the unremarked milestones of childhood. When your children start singing the alternative lyrics to Christmas carols for example. Then there's the replication of things recalled from one's own childhood. I was enjoying a breakfast croissant this morning when the 6 year old came up to me with a mischievous grin:

'Give me 5'

'Up high'

'Down low'

'Too slow!' 

Followed by uproarious mocking laughter.

That one's so old I'm sure my parents were doing it in their playgrounds. 

On an unrelated note 'Give me 5' is very triggering for me as it reminds me of one of my most embarrassing courtroom moments. Some years ago I was defending a teenage girl in quite a serious case who was a complete newcomer to the criminal justice system. We got to the end of the court day, the judge had risen and I went to the back of court to explain what had taken place and what would be happening the next day. I raised my hand in parting and to my horror she mirrored me and went in for a high 5 and thus it was that I end up playing a feeble sort of a pat-a-cake with a 15 year old girl in court in full court dress.

Anyway, my morning humiliation got me thinking of the rituals and rites of childhood and in particular something that I am really not looking forward to. There is an indistinct but seminal moment in every child's progression when they suddenly become cognisant of cool. A demarcation: BC (Before Cool) and AD (Adolescent Development).

BC, much more than how babies are made, why Trump and Johnson got elected and how we are all going to live underwater, to me represents the real Eden of childhood. A state of blissful ignorance about how the rest of the world perceives you so that you can unabashedly dance like nobody's watching even when everybody is. The ingenuousness of children is their absolute number one charm without which their childishness would be completely insufferable. Seeing it give way to a self-conscious desire to fit in is like watching a beautifully plumed bird rolling in the dust so that nobody notices it.

And at the heart of this dismal process is the desire to be cool. The days, weeks, months and years that we waste in this fruitless and heartless endeavour. For me the real hallmark of full maturity is the realisation that being cool is having the courage to be true to oneself, one's interests and one's quirks. But before that moment comes there is surrender to peer pressure, concealment of identity and, worst of all, denial of passion; because nothing is less cool than being keen.

Obviously there is a balance to be struck and AD necessarily involves understanding when it's appropriate. essential even to run with the crowd but if you don't learn to be an individual you grow up to be nobody.There are many things I want my children to be: unabashed, curious, heartfelt, compassionate, genuine. Cool is definitely not one of them.