OH LORDY, I’ve heard it all now. Life coaches for children? You cannot be serious!
It seems coaches are being hired by parents to tackle things like low self-confidence or pressure from exams.
But there are no fairy godmothers who can turn pumpkins into coaches or make life ‘a ball’ – for money.
If someone outside the immediate family is needed, where are the friends, aunties, grandparents, neighbours, or maybe even a favourite teacher? These are the people who used to step into this role.
My favourite coaches at school had seats in them and were used to transport us to the Malvern Hills on days out. Most children have been provided with life coaches anyway – they are called parents.
MUCH in life is beyond our control, particularly health matters, so I was interested to read that children’s tonsils aren’t now yanked out by a surgeon as a matter of course.
Various experts claim this is because of NHS rationing and has resulted in a 40 per cent increase in emergency admissions during the past decade.
However, I hope we never go back to conveyor belt tonsillectomies. I was seven when mine were removed and the children’s wards were so full of patients having the same operation that I was given a bed in the women’s ward.
It was good to be fed solely on jelly and ice cream, but hard to be away from home for a week. At least these days parents aren’t restricted to visiting their children for very short spells as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
Some things do improve over time.
SOMEONE who lit up my childhood was Daphne Oxenford, who died recently at the age of 93. I’m sure many of you will remember settling down by the radio to enjoy Listen With Mother.
The rise of television led to her programme being axed in 1982.
I would love to have interviewed her, so I was distraught to discover that she died in the retirement home for actors just up the road from me, in Northwood.
I could have started with her own words: “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”
