Parenting has always been a tough job and it is getting even tougher.  I am the father of three children and four grandchildren and have first had experience of how hard it can be. We dragged our children back and forth between Australia and New Zealand and one of my sons was really affected by that for some years.

My wife and I never claim to be excellent parents as we look back on many mistakes and the misguided things we did to our children. But today, we have three lovely adults who are doing well in life and of whom we are very proud. We taught them to be strong and independent early in life and that they would not always have us and did not actually need us. We love each other and really enjoy connecting now they are adults.

We were strict and the children still talk about some of the things we did not allow them to do and the punishments they had to endure but it is usually with good humour. With hindsight, they have come to acknowledge that we had good intentions even if we got it wrong sometimes.

I see today a very different approach to parenting to our own and that is not always a bad thing. Given we recognise we did not always get it right, changes were needed and have often been good. But we also grieve over the things we see that appear to be producing weak children and weaker adults. We laugh about the concept of the ‘tiger mum’ or the ‘helicopter parent’, but I experience interaction with such people regularly. It is refreshing to work with parents who are trying to take a sensible road between protection and total freedom.

Anxious parents make for anxious children. One of our previous counsellors used to say, the parent should at least appear to the child to be the least anxious person in the room. This is increasingly not the case. I see parents really worrying about the safety of their children but actually not shielding them from one of the most harmful things in our society – the mobile phone - with its easy access to hurtful social media posts, pornography and graphic images of traumatic world and life events.

I also see parents modelling poor behaviour to their children. Rushing to their defence without getting all the facts or refusing to believe others when they report that the child has done something inappropriate, blaming the school for what is happening to their child without taking some responsibility for it themselves and so on.

If it does take a village to raise a child, then we really need each other in the process. School and home (and Church) working together will help each child grow into mature, confident, capable adults.

 Phillip Nash