Let kids be kids, and keep politics out of the bedtime story

Shielding her children from the reality of human conflict, she urges ‘hiding’ that, for ‘every kind stranger’ there’s an unkind opposite.

Much as a realtor selling a dilapidated house talks of its potential, a child should be urged by its parents to think ‘you could make this place beautiful’ despite it all, the poem concludes.

Last week, by contrast, songwriter Paloma Faith told Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News that she says ‘Free Palestine’ to her kids every night. She thinks ‘children should be exposed to politics.’ Her children are aged nine, six, and six months old.

While I’ve admittedly little experience of managing a kid’s bedtime, I regularly babysit my five-year-old nephew. His knowledge of Middle East politics is negligible. He can rattle off the names and feeding habits of an impressive number of dinosaurs, but we’re saving the Israel/Palestine conflict until he’s fully able to master the use of a pencil.

I wish for him what any loving Aunt wants: to know that – unlike the realtor in Smith’s poem – the world isn’t ‘a real shithole’, but a privilege to experience, full of fascinating places, history, and people.

Yes, injustices exist. No, at five-years-old, they are not his burden. We keep some things from our children for good reason. We’ll agree there’s a dog heaven, shield them from atrocity images, and explain love still exists even if Daddy isn’t around much anymore.

The responses to Faith’s assertion have been fairly predictable. She’s been robustly mocked as yet another example of the lunacies of the hard left. She’ll mess them up! How dare she push her politics on them! But, before picking up stones, beware of glass houses.

All families have their own unique weirdness, all parents their foibles. In time, too, to the chagrin of many parents, kids may rebel against their too-pushy pressure to conform to certain worldviews.

Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ is his most famous poem for a reason. Most parents really don’t mean to ‘F--- you up,’ but there are many ways they can, or do. It isn’t inevitable that they ‘fill you with the faults they had,’ as Larkin doomed. But ‘adding new ones’ is definitely possible.

I think it unlikely Faith’s claims are strictly true, of course. While the monomania of some pro-Palestine activists is intense, I doubt she’s turned ‘Free Palestine’ into a nightly lullaby for her newborn.

But, what might older children make of it? Well, that depends on how the bedtime story has been told. A Manichean struggle between clear-cut goodies and baddies? A call for an end to Hamas rule? A call for a big, evil country called Israel to cease existing?

The entire problem with those two words, ‘Free Palestine,’ whispered, we’re invited to imagine, to near-sleeping children, is they represent several different things depending on who is chanting them.

Adults – and certain children’s publishers who push indoctrination over storytelling in ‘progressive’ kids’ books - routinely forget framing and context matters. A child being ‘exposed’ to politics is one thing. Understanding the world, human behaviour, and devastating conflicts quite another.

For that, they’re better off in Narnia, Hogwarts, or kids’ novels set in past conflicts, where moral lessons can be learned outside the hard facts of current reality. If a kid’s chanting ‘Globalise the Intifada!’, ‘God Hates Gays,’ ‘F--- TERFS’, or ‘Stop The Boats!’ while still believing in Santa Claus, it’s time to put down the banners and prioritise your kid’s development. It’s indoctrination, not education, if they’re chanting slogans that are – to them - ultimately meaningless.

Kids are sponges, and tend towards black-and-white thinking. They also long to please or placate those they admire, are scared of, or want to be loved by.

In primary one, I was barked at daily by a terrifying Headmistress every lunchtime to ‘Remember the starving children in Africa!’ My terror of her – though appreciation of her authority - meant I misunderstood the lesson she was trying to impart.

Her stern, hovering, vulture-like persona destroyed what could’ve been a positive message: isn’t it wonderful to have enough food? Not everyone in the world does, so be grateful, enjoy it, eat up! Instead, she instilled a sense of overwhelming guilt.

I’d scrape purposefully uneaten leftovers into the big food bins, which I’d interpreted as being delivered to the malnourished babies I’d seen on 1980s television appeals for Ethiopia. How dare I enjoy things like a cheese and pickle sandwich and a Kwenchy cup when kids were starving.

Where parents may not f--- you up, plenty of other adults might do.

Parents from my generation - including Paloma Faith who I’m roughly the same age as – experienced our formative years in a time of relative stability and peace. There are multiple reasons ‘Nineties Nostalgia’ has become a trend in recent years. Do we feel collective guilt for having had it pretty good?

I sometimes wonder if that’s what is behind this tendency to impose radical politics on one’s kids by those of my generation. I regularly see placard-waving antics from people who, until recently, didn’t have a political bone in their body.

Women dragging their kids to rallies for a day out and obligatory Instagram pics. Men donning t-shirts emblazoned with bizarre slogans like ‘Protect The Dolls,’ for online snaps in aid of the most shallow of causes.

Paloma Faith can keep whispering ‘Free Palestine’ at bedtime. I’ll keep reading ‘Katie and the Dinosaurs’ to my nephew until he falls asleep. I’m quite sure – despite our differences – we both wish the best world possible for our young charges to grow up in.

It has good bones. We mustn’t forget that.