“I can see spiders in the back of your mouth”

A FRIEND approaches me outside the bank. When I ask after his little daughter, he says that she’s been refusing to brush her teeth.

“She won’t let me go anywhere near her with a toothbrush,” he says.

Having worried, encouraged, cajoled, guided, laughed, shouted, cried, forced, bribed, pleaded, delighted, feared, reasoned, hoped and prayed in the service of parenting for the past 25 years I now find myself in the odd position of having to dispense advice on it.

This would be fine if, at some stage, whole chunks of the past half-a-century hadn’t gone missing.

I can’t remember for example, whether it’s possible to make shabby moral compromises — such as bribery, let’s say — with a six year-old or not.

I’m beginning to understand why my mother’s responded with ‘it’s just a phase love’ to any question I’ve pitched her regarding children and miscreant behaviour, since 1984: her memory had big holes in it too, which makes dispensing practical advice on specific parenting matters tricky.

“This has been going on for weeks,” he continues, “and I’m worried it’s going to become come a real issue.”

He says, “I mean did any of yours go through this?” “I can’t remember,” I say, “I’m sure one of them must have done.”

I’m also beginning to understand the rationale behind this response, which is another of my mother’s: there is nothing more dispiriting than being told in superior tones ‘no, my children never went through such a thing’ just after you’ve offered up an example of your own child’s bizarre misconduct.

And ‘no, my children never went through such a thing’ only becomes more dispiriting as time goes on, when your children have hit 13 and you start offering up examples of behaviour that contravene universally recognised standards of health, safety, sense and/or common decency. In this case, it is much kinder to say what a woman said to me once: “Stop worrying about nothing; good God, when mine were that age I had one on Prozac, one on benefits and one on Methadone and they’re all fine now!” This type of response will shrink most problems to pleasing proportions instantly.

But back to dispensing practical advice on specific parenting matters.

Clearly my friend has done the worrying and the fearing but I wonder if he’s tried the encouraging, cajoling, guiding, shouting, crying, bribing and pleading exhaustively.

“Done it all,” he says, “hasn’t worked. Short of pinning her to the floor and prising her mouth open,” he says, “I can’t think of a way round this.”

At which point, something starts coming back up out of a memory hole. “I seem to remember my cousin had a similar problem with her son,” I say, “but I think it was just his back teeth he didn’t like brushing.” My friend raises his eyebrows hopefully.

“One day, my cousin got so sick of it all that she screamed, ‘oh my God, I can see spiders in the back of your mouth’. She never had a problem after that, her son opened wide for her every time.”

Silence descends outside the bank. My friend looks very disappointed in me.

“Have you tried treats?” I say, “not so much bribing…” I reassure hurriedly, “…as rewarding?” I hope he doesn’t get caught up in semantics. “I’ve tried treats,” he says.

The light has gone out in his eyes. He’s imagining his daughter’s future, which contains gruesome teeth, being shunned in the school-yard and going ever after by the name of ‘Rubble Mouth’.

I repeat another of my mother’s stock phrases, “she’ll grow out of it. Kids grow out of pretty much everything.”

He still looks stuck.

“Don’t worry,” I say, “one of mine smoked, one drank more than I’d have liked at college, one played online poker all through 5th year, the other one sat in front of Facebook till I thought she might turn to stone, and they’re all fine now!”

That seems to have done it. The light’s come back in his eyes.