Rowan on mature parenting

Archbishop of Canterbury | Sermons and Speeches: "When we lived in Central Newport, my wife used to go to the local primary school which our daughter attended to help with reading practice. She would come back regularly and say that the problem was not teaching children how to read; the problem was communicating with children who were simply not used to talking with adults at all or being talked to by adults. Children had, in effect, been turned loose.
Literacy is not only about words; literacy is about the reading of feelings and persons, about speaking and listening: emotional literacy, social literacy. "

It took a while but I found the speech that the journalists have been writing about.

As usual with Rowan it is multi-layered and able to be read by different people in different ways.
What I glean from it is a sense of pride in us as parents.

When H was six her teacher commented that you could have a converstion with her as if she were an adult. That is how we brought her up, with deep respect for her intelligence and humanity. It was hard for me to listen to her pain this afternoon about not having her chosen college at Cambridge. But I listened patiently as I always have.

G told me the other day that H shared with her "loving" and "listening" as qualities she values in me.
I am proud that she has formed such a confiding relationship in G.

I wrote about R's qualities in my lat post.

Here I want to boast about parenting the boys. I have already said that after 2 terms C is already the social centre of the class.

Here I want to talk about J a little. He is confident enough to contradict me in public as he did yesterday about R's age. He can join in with adults and children in making a speech at our wedding. Every evening meal he makes use of an opportunity to share his thoughts and feelings just as the rest of us do.

He is a star at story telling and loves his theatre-school group.

But according to the head he is being damaged by us as parents, and in danger of neglect.

Why does it bother me so much, when it is clear she sees snow when everyone else in the county sees barely a flake?

Because it is my family. And I am ever more furious about mistreatment by the school.

It takes a village to bring up a child, says Rowan.

We may have to take him out of the village to have him schooled now.

My English idyll, my good place to bring up children, is being destroyed by what used to be a reasonably good school.