Parenting in 2008 - Yes, it’s okay to say ‘no’

BECAUSE we all love China this week it may be appropriate to quote a Chinese politician on a visit to America. “The Americans,” he said, “are wonderful, people, they do everything their children tell them to.”

We may not be able to laugh at that as easily as we would have once because, for a plethora of reasons, we are closer to Boston than Beijing on this than we might care to imagine.

Yesterday, one of the country’s leading experts warned parents to stop their children wearing overtly sexual clothes and watching unsuitable television to protect them from premature sexualisation.

That may be as obvious as saying Michael Phelps can swim a bit. It may be dismissed as a prudish voice from our past trying to re-impose the values of another time but of course we all know in our heart of hearts that children do not always know best and that it is part of being a good parent to sometimes say “no”.

Why should anyone fear saying “no” if it protects a beloved child from the awful exploitation so prevalent in so much of our world?