Meet the parents

Lucy Etherington goes back to school to learn parenting

Above: The Parent Practice runs several long-term and short-term courses

I’m in a rather splendid drawing room in South Clapham watching a grown woman pretend to be a petulant seven-year-old.

The woman is called Sarah and she’s one of the helpers in tonight’s Parent Practice workshop. Although the mere phrase ‘role play’ is usually enough to send me screaming to the nearest pub, this isn’t so bad because I’m not being asked to participate.

The dad next to me also seems to have lightened up, although this could be because Sarah, has started kicking her legs (as petulant seven-year-old). Another woman with nice hair wearing a pair of sparkly L K Bennet slingbacks is playing the mum, and is demonstrating how to get your child out of bed and dressed and ready for school without resorting to threats, bribery or shouting.

As cringeworthy as it sounds, this simple little demo is gold dust to any of us parents who weren’t born saints.

"When I first came to The Parent Practice, I thought it was awful," admits Elaine Halligan, who did a course when her son, Sam, was thrown out of three schools for difficult behaviour. "But by the time I completed the first course, the effects were so dramatic, I was converted."
Not only did Elaine’s relationship with her son, now 10, improve vastly and to the benefit of his education; she also ended up jacking in her job as a chartered accountant and training as a ‘facilitator’ (that’s non-aggressive lingo for teacher) for The Parent Practice.

She’s the one in the sparkly slingbacks. "I think I used to be a horrible person," she whispers to me, during the break for tea and biscuits. "Now I’m so calm. My son even tells his friends he thinks I’m the greatest mum!"

The Parent Practice runs several long-term and short-term courses aimed at arming new parents with all the tools to produce healthy, well rounded children.

It is based on the very simple and obvious idea that we’re trained to do virtually everything else in life – from cooking to driving to being successful in our careers. But when it comes to babies, we’re supposed to know instinctually what to do, and are left to get on with it. Many of us muddle through and end up making the mistakes we swore we never would.

My daily sins include begging, making physical threats to beloved soft toys ("If you don’t clear your room, Teddy gets it!"), sweets and even cash bribes (through which my daughter has learned the valuable skill of bartering, while unfortunately for her, clearing out her own school fund).

Like the other 15 or so parents in the very lovely house – which also happens to be the home of Melissa Hood, who runs The Parent Practice – I admit to having resorted to shouting and saying the things I swore I never would, only to be totally ignored.

Which is why I have chosen to attend the Positive Discipline workshop. Through it, I’m hoping to establish a few basic household rules without coming on like the strict disciplinarian against whom my kids will invariably rebel. Like most parents, I’d like to earn my children’s trust and respect.

A workshop is a good way of getting a feel for how the Parent Practice works before signing up for one of four 10 week intensive courses, their personal consultations, or even the a shorter four week course.

It also offers some ingeniously simple tips on how to communicate with – and, let’s be honest, control – toddlers. And if three hours seems like a long time, they pack a lot in. I didn’t particularly warm to the presentation charts and slightly patronising lingo, like positive praise, pendulum parenting and ‘rules are your friends’. But the core clients – lawyers and management and city types – are clearly more used to this style of delivery. Even Elaine admitted to me that she found it all a bit "Californian and contrived" when she attended her first workshop five years ago.

Yet beyond my deeply ingrained scepticism (essential as a journalist, you understand) I must admit that I came away with some invaluable tips, and more importantly, a new way of seeing my role as a parent that was really rather refreshing.

My particular epiphany was when Elaine said: "What makes you think your agenda is more important than your child’s? Your child isn’t starving, so why do they want to stop playing with their cars or dolls and sit at the dinner table? That’s boring."

The trick, therefore, is to convince the child that eating dinner is a brilliant idea, and that it’s their brilliant idea. I tried it, and it works – and it’s so much more fun and less exhausting than nagging, yelling and being ignored. Or indeed holding a spud gun to Teddy’s knees!