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VOICE TRIALS<br />
for boys aged 7 & 8<br />
10 th November <strong>2018</strong><br />
Enquiries are welcome at any time<br />
Substantial scholarships are awarded<br />
and choristers benefit from an all-round<br />
excellent education at St Edmund’s<br />
School Canterbury.<br />
The Master of Choristers, David Flood,<br />
is always pleased to meet and advise<br />
parents and their sons.<br />
For further details please telephone<br />
01227 865242<br />
davidf@canterbury-cathedral.org<br />
@No1Cathedral<br />
CanterburyCathedralChoir<strong>ED05</strong>.indd 1 04/05/<strong>2018</strong> 15:42<br />
6Time<br />
See four, above. By which I mean quality<br />
time, not in the oh-my-precious-babyyou-are-the-centre-of-the-universe<br />
way,<br />
but in a respectful, being properly present when it<br />
matters way. Children who get enough of this kind<br />
of attention cannot fail to flourish and grow.<br />
7Freedom<br />
Children are little animals. They need to run,<br />
jump, wrestle and explore. Later they need to<br />
expand their horizons, walk to the shop alone,<br />
go out on their bikes, and then (gulp) go up to the city,<br />
go to the pub, go travelling… It’s so hard to know how<br />
and when to release the brakes, but it has to be done to<br />
allow them to grow their own strength and judgment.<br />
8Encouragement<br />
I wish now, I’d done more to positively<br />
encourage enthusiasms of every sort, from<br />
photography to riding. At the time I saw<br />
these interests as passing (and potentially expensive)<br />
fancies. Now I can see that they were creativity<br />
looking for its way out. With hindsight, I would<br />
have switched off their screens more, and encouraged<br />
them much harder to get up and get doing.<br />
9Trust<br />
Of course, you can’t trust a baby to navigate<br />
stairs alone, or a teenage boy to drive safely<br />
without some experience behind the wheel,<br />
but micromanaging children’s lives definitely does more<br />
harm than good. I wish that – within sensible limits –<br />
I’d shown my children more trust in their developing<br />
abilities to make good decisions and also shown more<br />
forgiveness when they inevitably got things wrong.<br />
10<br />
Love and laughter<br />
Life isn’t always a serious business, and I<br />
wish I’d done more to help my children<br />
see that. All children need to discover that<br />
mistakes are how you learn, that it’s possible to bounce<br />
back after bad stuff has happened, and that, on the<br />
whole, nothing matters quite as much as we think it<br />
does and quite a lot of things don’t matter at all.<br />
A childhood of love and laughter is probably the best<br />
recipe I know for a happy, healthy adulthood.<br />
Which is not to say they didn’t have plenty. They did,<br />
and it’s been a joy to see them grow up happy and<br />
resilient. But no child can ever have too much.<br />
In fact, if we love our children, and make sure<br />
that they always know that we do, then they will<br />
be absolutely fine. So forget hindsight, and all the<br />
the conscience-pricking lessons it wants to teach<br />
us. They are for perfectionists only. And when did<br />
perfectionism have anything to do with parenting?<br />
surrey-homes.co.uk<br />
18<br />
SpringGroveSchoolWT194.indd 1 15/03/<strong>2018</strong> 15:22
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