Jake when he was about 10.

The children were growing up.  The elder two caused that usual adolescant mixture of joy and fury, temper and sulks, utter and complete selfishness and sudden and unexpected spurts of kindness and cooperation.  And more.  Much more.  I won't say those years were "normal" because they weren't, and some of the events took me years to recover from - in fact, were the greatest tests of my life - but I have written a whole book about it and I won't go in to it here.

I continued with my rounds of the banks. Phoned to see if they had got an answer for me, phoned the next one, then the next.  I saw a financier in La Rochelle who put far more energy in to trying to (unsuccesfully!) get me in to bed with him than dealing with my dossier, and another on the island here who told me that no bank anywhere in the world was ever going to loan anybody such a massive sum.

"It's not a massive sum!" I wailed, "it is the price of a very ordinary house in England!"

"But this is France," he replied with a logic that was infuriating.

Money laundering

My father put up some money so that we could continue with the work.   It was now March.  The first signs of spring were arriving and, if we didn't start to advertise the cottage holiday lets very soon, we would miss the season altogether.  And then another year would go by.  I was beside myself.  We owed so much money to the men, to my father, to the suppliers, and to our very selves.  We had to get this loan one way or another and we even travelled to Paris to see a north African gentleman who, we discovered, wanted to launder his money through us.

" Typical!" I spat. "At last we find somebody willing to put up the money - and he has to be a b....y criminal!"

My mother, bless her, trying to encourage me, said:

"Don't worry about your looks, my dear, they will come back once you can relax again."

Oh, thanks mummy!  I had no idea my looks had "gone" !

  The stone walls.  Each and every stone had to be picked around the joints so that it could be re-pointed, and then cleaned off.  This picture shows about two thirds of the extent of the walls - it was a labour-intensive job.  And just clearing away all the junk ! - there were mountains of it.

And it was that same week that at last we got the loan.  Of all the big nationwide banks I had applied to, and all the local banks, it was a small unheard-of bank in Rochefort.

We have never moved so fast.  We placed advertisements in the UK and very rapidly had bookings for all the cottages for the summer.  Internet was in its infancy and ads went in to glossy magazines.  The phone rang constantly.  We even rigged up a loudspeaker outside for the phone so that we could hear it ring and rush to deal with an enquiry.  We worked day and night, seven days a week, for three months.  And in those three months we created six cottages - floors, ceilings, roof, plumbing, wiring ... all of it, to include raising the roof in two places.

Major building work

There were two really very major works.  One was with the drainage because the land is solid rock.  I spent time phoning round to find the appropriate builder - they call that sort of work terrassement in France - you need to know this kind of stuff because you can waste hours and hours phoning the wrong people.  Initially a man said he would do it with a mini-digger.  He came round to look at the site, but Bruce told him he wouldn't be able to do it, the ground was far too hard. And sure enough the man couldn't and made only a five-minute attempt.   More time wasted. So Bruce hired a big compressor and two road drills - more phone calls, more trips in to town, more time - and it took 4 men 4 days to dig the trenches through solid rock.  We were amazingly lucky that there was mains drainage to connect to in the road that ran past.

 The pool on the cottage side, and also the one on the chateau side, are situated in the only two places in the entire property where there is no rock. When the first lot of guests arrived the pool wasn't quite ready.  Mercifully they all had that good old British stiff upper lip, and they just bore with us till, on the third day of their stay, we were able to fill the thing up with water.  It took an entire day and night to fill.  The "hill" the far side of the pool is, of course, simply the earth that was dug out.  It now has a children's fort on the top of it, built by regular holiday-makers.  Loads of things like the derlict shed behind and the broken wall to one side had to be left for several years till we could afford it.

The second major item was the pointing and rendering of the exterior walls - and some of the interior ones too.   It was a massive job and big old Michel had already started hacking out the old, blackened render.  We had thought we would do this ourselves but mercifully one of our labourers had a brother who had all the specialist equipment precisely for that.  It cost a huge amount and made a serious dent in our budget, but it was well worth it for it saved many weeks in time, plus a great deal of energy and hassle.   Actually, they were a really good team - from Saintes I seem to remember - who turned up promptly every morning and worked hard and fast till the job was done.

All roofs had to come off, already broken or otherwise,  to be insulated and then laid with  flexible waterproof material before putting the old Roman tiles ontop.

Inside partition walls that we built had a  timber frame, then laid with insualtion & plasterboard, incorporating wiring and  plumbing as we went.   I loathe glass fibre - it gets everywhere - in to your clothes and eyes, and it feels itchy and uncomfortable and the only solution is not only a shower but a complete change of clothes too.   The French call it "laine de verre", meaning glass wool.

Some weeks we had up to fifteen extra people on the site, to include Michel's daughter who came to help me make curtains, and Corinne, the gipsy I mentioned earlier with her little girls.  The little girls ran around the site playing in the debris.  I bought a second-hand buggy for the baby and carted her back and forth with me when Corinne couldn't.  We put table and chairs in what is now cottage 2, a fridge and an old cooker, so that the men could make coffee and eat as they wished.  While the weather remained cold they lit a fire on the floor, there in the middle of the derelict room.

These were good, fruitful, positive days.

  The corner barn with a huge hole in the roof became our home for several years till we were able to convert it.  We sort-of camped in there from April-ish to mid-September or so, when the Chateau became available again.  The Chateau lettings went very well, despite several initial mistakes, and it was almost always full.  

All around was beaten earth and that summer was extremely hot.  Jake and I flung grass seed down in all the little front gardens - too late realizing that one packet was wheat !! - and it is surprising how much of it took - both the grass and the wheat!  Grass is good stuff.  It grows in all sorts of places, hot or cold,  and survives all sorts of abuse.  I like grass.

Jake and I were also in charge of buying the wherewithall to furnish the cottages, and we dashed about after I had picked him up from school, frantically ordering beds and mattresses (you couldn't do things on line), dozens of cups and plates and pillows.  We had a Chrysler Grand Voyager at that time and we were able to pile a great deal in, Jake frequently balancing buckets and plants and curtain rails on his lap.  We would unload it in to one of the cottages, where it always got in the way of the workers, and dash back to the shop for the next load.  Back and forth, half an hour in each direction.  Sometimes things were delivered, but usually delivery was too expensive or - more importantly - too slow.

Jake was great company, a smiley, happy little guy who joined in all this activity with as much energy as I did.

Everything had to be inexpensive and serviceable; it also had to be easily replaced.  A year later a really good shop opened in a neighbouring village, where you can buy almost anything and everything needed for a holiday cottages - from teaspoons to floor tiles and more.  But at that time I had to drive to Royan or Saintes and make my way to the relatively few suitable stores there were.

Thundery-looking day that spring. A large part of the roof re-done and the exterior stonework cleaned up. I see there is a new door-frame in place (cottage 5), though none of the windows are in.  Mud and/or dirt everywhere.  When Jake and I were finally able to clear up the grounds, the cigarette ends alone filled a bucket or two despite my constantly asking the men to dispose of their butts properly.  

  Ready for occupation. We made a mistake with that fencing, and once guest said it looked like pig-pens!!!  We cut them down to a better height the following year.  No grass - just scrub really.  It is interesting to look at this picture now when the trees we planted along the fencing have all grown up and the hollyhocks provide splashes of colour all summer long.  It was so bare then.

I opted for either yellow, orange or green everywhere downstairs and blue in the bedrooms.  All crockery had to be easily replaced, bearing breakages in mind, and for the same reason had to be cheap.  The cuttlery suffered from Yuri Gellar syndrome but - despite its flexible abilities - it is still going strong to this day.  Saucepans and bowls, bottle openers and kitchen implements, bins and doormats ... it is amazing how much we had to buy.

The furniture was inexpensive flat-pack pine - much to the fury of the men when they realized it all needed to be assembled.  Amid a hearty mix of grumbles and laughter, they cracked on with it.  William did a lot of it himself ... he'd have been 16 I think.  He was a brilliant help.  Sun loungers, garden furniture, parasols.  Pots of geraniums, curtains, tea towels. Bedding!  That first year - in fact for the first three years I seem to recall - the sheets, towels and pillow cases were all bought in charity shops when we were in the UK, and were an extraordinary mixture of colours and patterns.  It was all we could afford.  When guests arrived they were somewhat taken aback, but very few minded.

  The first few years were incredibly hard work. With little money to spare I did all the cleaning of the cottages and Francoise (here, in red) did the Chateau.  Gosh, she was a tough little thing, tough as nails, hard working and strong even though she was small.  We went hell-bent-for-leather on changeover days.  During the week all the bedding had to be washed and ironed, regardless of the weather.  Nowadays I have an entire batallion of cleaning and outdoor staff and I farm-out the laundry.  But those first few years it was extraordinarily hard work.  But fun.  Lucrative fun.

The last cottage was ready just half an hour or so before the guests arrived.  The previous night we had worked till very late, painting walls, assembling furniture, putting curtains and pictures up.  We decided the simplest thing was to sleep in there and I stained and varnished the staircase as I worked my way backwards upstairs.  In the morning they were still sticky and I used a hair dryer to dry them off!

People could see we were working very hard.  The weather was great and the beach not far, so most guests were satisfied.  That first year there was just one woman who complained - I hadn't thought of coat hangers and she made a major issue out of it.   It is a pity when people make an issue over something small for it sort-of devalues any other issues that may crop up.  Oddly enough it is always the same type of person too.

At the end of that first week we stood in the darkening grounds one evening and looked at the lights in the pool and the barbeques sizzling in the little individual gardens, and listened to the low drone of voices of people as they cooked their meals and talked about their day ... and we felt proud.  Very proud indeed.

Part 21 to follow

 Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon/Kindle or can be ordered from most stores & libraries.

It happened like this...an English family moves to France. Part 9

Although we found a buyer for our house relatively quickly, Completion dragged on for over a year.  He was buying, he wasn’t, he was buying, he wasn’t … I packed things and unpacked them, phoned the notaire, faxed him, stared at the telephone, stared at the fax, stared at the sky.  We heard that the buyer had moved to Hawaii.  We heard that he was now in Portugal.. We heard that he was moving here after all.  I put the property back on the market, showed more people around it, heard good news from the notaire and took it off the market again.  Another long silence, so I put the house on the market once more, showed people around … on and on till finally Completion, well tattered and almost unrecognizable, limped through the door.

A peaceful haven ..

Like most women, my heart just went out of the house as soon as I knew we were selling.  All the work we had lovingly put in became irrelevant, and all I could see was a monster in need of constant maintenance.  What had once been a peaceful haven for me where I could lick my wounds, became an isolated and cold wind-swept batisse that I no longer wanted to live in.  A large damp patch developped near the front door, the upper stair carpet started to fray in one corner, the fleur-de-lys floor tiles in the hall became too tedious to clean, and the flower beds were just fine with weeds  in ….

Pippa waiting for the school bus outside our front gates. One year when we were camping in Spain we bought two concrete lions and, with the aid of a digger, hoisted them up on top of those pillars.  As far as I know they are there to this day.

I wanted to go home …

… more than anything .  We sat down and did the sums over and again, and it didn’t matter which way round we calculated it, we would be utterly broke if we went back to the UK, would have to find work somehow, the children would have to start all over again in the UK system … it just didn’t make financial sense, nor practical sense.  And any emotional sense would soon be thwarted by the practicalities of life.

I had access to a lot of properties because of my business.   I had seen every kind of property under the sun, both inside and out, and had negotiated every step of every element in a hundred and one deals.  I knew what we were about, what the values were, which loans were available, who to contact.  I could tell at a glance anything that was a quick camouflage job, indoors or out, I could judge the state of the roof, I could spot termite trails a mile off.   I knew all about the little hitches that could wreck a potential purchase, where and how to check the title of the vendors, where and how to check the boundaries of the land.

I was no longer the young woman who thought she was busy because she had a baby and two children.  I knew what real busy was, and I knew all about stress and disappointment.  I had changed.  And although I was aware I had developped a kind of hardness, a water-off-a-duck’s back attitude to so many things, I felt I was probably a better person.  A wiser person, certainly.

 We both liked the old Roman town of Saintes, and toyed with looking there.  I had never lived in a town, though Saintes is not big.  It is still my favourite town in the area.  Until 1810 it was the “capital” of what was then called the Charentes-inferieures (Charente Maritime) but, like so many towns of its ilk faded in to grubby obscurity till it was restored and put on the map, as it were, in 1990.  The river Charente runs though it, lovely for boating or walking, and there is an excellent pedestrianized area with lots of shops and restaurants.

Red tape.

In the meantime, if I was to work, which I was, I still had to obtain my Carte Professionelle.  I hurled myself in an impressive variety of somersaults as I found the torturous routes through the system, which seemed to be designed on purpose to make everything as difficult as possible.  I became an expert acrobat, brilliant at walking a tightrope.  Nothing phased me any more.  I had been there.  Done that.   At the time it seemed to me that France wallowed in bureaucratic nightmare, but I now know that Britain is the exception – Britain, the US, Australia and other English-speaking countries.  We are “free” and, providing we obey the law we may do as we wish, within reason.  On the Continent it is the opposite – you may do as you wish providing there is a law permitting you to do so.   That is why the French use expressions such as “je n’ai pas le droit” which you would never hear in English.

I have no idea how many phone calls I made, nor how many letters I wrote, but I had to drive to La Rochelle (almost an hour) on five or six occasions and eventually met the Mr Valtel I had been told about.  Actually, he was very kind and really wanted to help me.  He was the first to admit the system was ridiculous and that I had been badly served.  He helped me through several loop holes as I got my dossier ready.  This included, I recall, having an “official police translater” translate my papers – which cost me quite a lot of money, but was a requirement.  She translated “estate agent” as Agent of the State, which caused great hilarity in Valtel’s office.  Another police official had written that I had been born in Cape Province, South Africa, Angleterre.

Not that I wish to ridicule the police – I am a great admirer of the police.  But I think the point is perhaps that they are precisely that – the police, invented for catching criminals.

The red tape was such that even Valtel had to make phone calls to obtain information.  On one occasion, with me in his office, he phoned the Minister of Somethingorother in Paris.  He flicked the phone on to loud speaker and explained my situation.  The Minister listened.

“Ecoutez,” he said after a while, “il ne faut pas trop leur aider, les anglais.  Qu’elle rentre chez elle si elle n’aime pas.”

Translated: Listen, you musn’t help the English too much;  if she doesn’t like it she can go home.

Valtel was mortified.

To cut a long story short, and after months and months and months, my Carte Professionelle was refused by the Powers That Be in Paris.  The reason was because I was a foreigner.  I was certain that was discrimination and that I could have kicked up a fuss.

“You are, in effect, forbidding me to work!” I exclaimed.

Our delicious boys!

Exhaustion

But, truth be told, I no longer cared.  I was seriously exhausted.  You wouldn’t think it but clients are very demanding.  Perhaps any job where you work with the public is demanding in a way that it isn’t when you work with a colleague or two, or an inanimate object of some kind.  I had to keep up a pleasant and smiling facade, be interested in what they were saying, not mind their children filling my car up with crisps and screaming in my ear … hour after hour, day after day, and all in the hope they would buy something.  And then I’d be so pleased because they wanted to buy something, I’d let the notaire know, let the vendor know … pat the whole thing through months of paperwork to Completion, be available on the phone for idiot questions and requests, (“Oh Catherine!  So glad to catch you!  Would you mind popping over to our place … he he, well, the one we are buying, and measuring the skirting boards for me?”) keeping my clients happy with their purchase till I got my commission cheque.  But often enough, for no good reason, the clients would change their minds and the sale would fall through.  Nobody paid me.  I had to create my own money.  Often enough it was exhilarating but sometimes it was gutting.

These things don’t sound so bad in themselves, I know, but it was continuous.  After a full day’s work and with three small children, it was sometimes as much as I could stand.

And so I stopped.  Just like that.  I was not willing to battle for the Carte.  I was not willing to exhaust myself any further.  I wanted to be at home with my children.  We were selling up and moving to the coast where, I hoped, there would be a bit more life and laughter.  I took out the last few of my clients (breaking the law utterly) and then handed them over to the notaire.  Waved. Said goodbye.

Jake playing in some drains on a building site.  Isn’t it funny how, thirty years later, you can still recognize the clothes your children wore ?  I remember that little sweat-shirt; it had baa-lambs on it.

 Health matters.

We found that Bruce’s Meniere’s would come and go.  There was no two ways about it, but the arrival of the post, which could quite plausibly herald some dreadful letter from some authority somewhere, triggered it off. The phone ringing.  People rang in the evenings, when he was home and the calls were cheaper – giving him no rest once he got home.  It drove us both mad, trying to get supper, get the children off to bed, tidy up, rest a bit – and that phone kept ringing.  We were obliged to answer it.  That was how we made our money.  Sometimes it was one of Bruce’s clients to say he was delighted with the mezzanine, or another client to say he was furious the electrics were not finished.  Frequently it was somebody being thoughtless, all wrapped up in their own project of a house in France and totally forgetting that we were real live human beings that needed time off.

Sometimes Bruce was so ill all he could do was lie on the floor.  He said he couldn’t fall off the floor.  At other times it was just a maddening buzzing in his head.

Something had to change and we had to find a different way of earning money.

  We cycled almost every Sunday unless I had clients.  The roads around Primrose were very quiet and fairly flat.

Finding a suitable property

Of the thirty or forty properties that I knew were for sale, none was suitable for us.  We had become accustomed to large, airy rooms and big windows.  We were used to a lot of space and plenty of quiet.  With a limited budget (despite selling Primrose at a juicy profit) there were not that many houses available for us to look at.  Furthermore, property near or on the coast was more expensive – still very cheap compared to Britain, but almost beyond our budget.  To top it, there was very little indeed in the way of buildings for renovation and the few that there were tended to be village houses in run-down little streets, or grotty farm dwellings with no architectural relief, never mind pleasant views, and surrounded by nasty modern bungalows.

We both had a wild idea that we could perhaps buy a modern property in need of no work.  That appealed to us for a while, and Lord knows there were plenty of recently-built properties all along the coast, most of them square and unattractive boxes.  I love the turn-of-the-century, ie 1900s, seaside architecture but anything we liked as also too expensive, though for a while we did consider a magnificent house on a cliff, overlooking the sea, near Royan.  It had been “restored” in the 1960s and everything needed re-doing, so it was just up our street.  Some bright spark had even removed the original staircase and replaced it with a “modern” concrete one, complete with duff-coloured tiles!   But no, that sea view, so lovely, so hypnotic in the summer, would become a fierce and icy enemy in the winter.  So the hunt continued.

And it was one day, as we returned from a day trip cycling with the children on the island of Oleron, that we drove past a huge old house with a For Sale sign.

“Talk about a white elephant!” I exclaimed.

“Hmmph!” agreed Bruce, “I wonder which idiot is ever going to buy that?”

Part 8

Part 10 to follow.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, an artist and a poet.  Her books are available from Amazon/Kindle or can be ordered from any leading bookstore or library.  They are also available as e-books on this site.

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-9/#sthash.9jdCYz83.dpuf

Bullying

All three of my children suffered bullying at school, though mercifully in moderate forms.   All three were (and are) strong personalities who were able to step aside from it to an extent.  All three also kept it more-or-less to themselves for a long time.  This told me two things – one was that there was an element of fear in that, if they told, the situation would get worse and two, that they felt issue could not anyway be resolved.  I tried to comfort myelf with the thought that if it were that bad, they’d react … but unhappily it doesn’t work that way, and a long time can go by before a parent realizes their child is being bullied.

The fact that bullies are invariably “inadequate” people is no comfort at all.

Our case was exaccabated by two things – I was a working mother and, although I was devoted (and still am!) to my babies, I was nonetheless very very busy. Secondly, the staff at the respective schools had not only not noticed anything but also didn’t care at all.

For this blog in full and more please see: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/bullying/#sthash.qLfBSluH.dpuf

Those who shouldn't have kids

Of course, we just cannot go down that line, much as we would like to sometimes … but some people should not be allowed to have kids.

Some years ago we had a tenant in one of our flats, a young chap of 19, named Pierre-Anton.  Or it might have been Pierre-Antoine. I can’t remember. He moved in to the flat with his girl-friend, a weighty young lady of about the same age and named Corinne.  Both were under “tutelle” which is a usually very good system here in France where exceptionally unintelligent or incapable people (but not handicapped people which is a different thing altogether) are legally put under the watchful eye of somebody with a bit of sense.  It can be a neighbour or a parent, a total stranger or a friend.  Both Pierre-Anton and Corinne were extremely thick  - for want of a better word.

Many of our tenants were what the French call “les cas sociaux” (social cases) and that is where we came in. There were not enough council flats or houses, and most landlords would only take tenants who could pay two months’ deposit plus the rent up front, and also be in posession of a CDI (full time work contract).  For les cas sociaux this was out of the question.

So we filled the gap by providing inexpensive accomodation where the council paid a months’ deposit on behalf of the tenant, and the tenants rent-allowance money went straight on to our account.  This meant the tenant only had to fork out as little as 10 Euros a month from his own pocket for the rent, but most were incapable of even that – indeed, seemed to think that because I was the landlady, I somehow “owed” them something.

But I diverge.  Pierre-Anton and Corinne moved in to one of our flats with their few posessions.  In no time at all Corinne was pregnant.  It took me a while to realize she was pregant because she was such a hefty lady that it really didn’t show.  The baby was born in the local hospital and they named the poor little scrap Francois.  Corinne went home.  I suppose the health visitor and/or a social worker must have visited, I don’t know, but Corinne forgot to feed the baby (he was sleeping all the time, I wasn’t going to wake him, was I ?!! she said at the inquest) and he died when he was about four days old.

Now, I know we cannot do it.  I know we must never go down that line.  But boy oh boy, did Corinne need to be sterlized !!   And did Pierre-Anton need the snip !!!!   Within a year another baby was born, though this time both the health visitor, the social worker came round regularly – in fact, I think some poor carer actually lived in the flat with them till we could all be sure that both young parents knew how to look after a baby.

I love children. I love babies. But I have to say it – one glance at that baby and you could see he was every bit as stupid as the parents.  A year after that another baby was born, and then a third.  They all had that same look to them.  The flat got steadily more crowded and steadily more dirty and more run-down.  Both parents seemed to spend most of the time shouting either at each other or at the babies.  The stench was something else.

After considerable effort I managed to get them moved in to a little house with a garden.  I helped with all their stuff, shook hands, kissed the children (the French spend a lot of time kissing each other), wished them well.  And I drove away.

Some three years later the phone rang and it was a social worker in Saintes – a good half hour drive away from me.  Pierre-Anton and Corinne are in terrible debt, she explained, and they tell me that the only person they can think of who might help them is you.

Pardon ?  Where do I fit in to this picture ?  I haven’t seen them for three years and they are nothing to do with me.

“Their rent is covered,” continued the social worker, “but their electricity has been cut off and also their water.  The gas and telephone have both been cut off for a long time.  We provide emergency help in cases such as this, but this young couple have already dipped in to that fund many many times.  He cannot hold down a job, though he regularly has a bit of work.  He does try.  But the situation is such that we must now remove the children from them.”

“Well, that might be the best thing ….” I ventured.

The discussion went on for some time and Pierre-Anton came on the line … and to cut a long story short I agreed to drive over to Saintes and meet them, to include the social worker.

I wanted to say “these people should never have been allowed to have another baby, let alone three!” but, of course, one can’t say that.  All of them looked so poor and so depressed.  The kiddies had those large dark teary eyes of unhappy children, an dhow could any of us wish them anything other than Life, Healthy and Fulfilling Life ?  I wondered what had gone wrong in the overall plan of things in an up-beat country like France that this dirty little family had slipped through the net and found themselves begging from an ex-landlady.

So, I paid for the utilities to go back on and I helped Pierre-Anton find another job on the strict basis that a) the social system would put them under a different “tutelle” (not me!! I exclaimed) and b) that Pierre-Anton would listen with great care to any and all advice on how to keep his job.

I saw them again in a market, about five years after that. They were still together (no matter how stupid the parents, children are usually better off with their own flesh and blood) and still looked very poor.  I ducked behind a stall because I didn’t want them to see me, and watched for a while.  All three children had grown, of course, heading in to puberty and ready to go off and produce another lot just like them …

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  More about Catherine Broughton, to include her entertaining blogs, stories and sketches from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Shoud children be forced to eat?

As a grandmother, my answer is a firm and emphatic NO. Goodness, I remember such fraught meal times as I tried to cajole our eldest and also our youngest in to eating things they didn’t want. The middle child always tucked in to anything and everything, but he was unusual in that way. Meal times should be pleasant affairs, a time when the family communicate with each other, tell each other stuff, and when children learn social interaction. To spoil it by getting cross because the food isn’t being eaten is a shame.
To spoil meal times because the food isn’t being eaten when you already knew little he or she wouldn’t like it, is just stupid.

Having said that, there is a big difference between just giving-in to a naughty and ill-mannered child, and deciding to not force them to eat. Those are two different things. Where the problem arises is when you THINK your child likes …. spaghetti, for example ….. and find that he used to but doesn’t any more. And to say to each child, every meal time, “what would you like to eat darling?” is just crazy.

Having grown older and – one assumes! – wiser, the best thing to do is to give the children a choice: “guys, I am going to do either roast chicken or shepherd’s pie. Which shall we have?”
Now, IMPORTANT NOTE: you are not asking them what they would like to eat, you are giving them a choice. It is good for them to make a choice and to agree on one meal or the other (though Lord know this in itself can cause arguments!). Note also the first person plural: which shall WE have? By handling it like this you are informing the little blighters that
1) they will be eating
2) you are joining in with them with what the food will be
3) you are giving them a choice
4) they are a part of the household decisions

Busy mums and limited budgets notwithstanding, something along those lines really should be possible.
So – the child has said he would like shepherd’s pie. It is then perfectly reasonable (on the assumption he knows what shepherd’s pie is!) to expect him to therefore eat it. Piling food high on a plate can be daunting for a child, particularly if he is a fussy eater, so just give a small amount, and tell him he can have more if he would like it. If he then declares he doesn’t want shepherds pie, I’m afraid you’ve got something wrong with your parenting skills – for that is just a naughty and thoughtless child. And that is a different issue altogether.

Children don’t let themselves starve, and it is amazing how well they do on seemingly little food. Our daughter was terribly skinny, but perfectly strong. Our grandson has been with us (age 11) for the past fortnight and he has eaten …. let me see …….. zillions of yoghurts and fruit purees, several lots of spaghetti covered in BBQ sauce, 2 packets of cereal (with or without milk), about 8000 packets of biscuits and nigh-on 50 million Easter eggs. What I do insist on is that he eats with us, holds his knife and fork decently (if not actually correctly), eats whatever it was he said we should prepare (or most of it) ….. and try to talk about something other than his XBox360 …….

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