Don't Push It

It’s a species well-known the world over. Articles have been written about its members, debating their methods, their long-term effects both good and bad; people have given advice on how to handle them, better still, how to defeat them. They are, of course, pushy parents.

I’ve lived in a few places, and nowhere has this species honed itself to quite such ruthless, determined, annihilating perfection as in Guernsey. Perhaps this is because I spent my teenage years here, thus attending the sort of musical andd sporting activities that attracted mid-lifers bubbling with thwarted ambitions and broken dreams desperately displaced onto their hapless offspring. Perhaps there are other explanations, to do with money and expectation (where there is pressure on said offspring to become the CEO of a major company whilst winning an Olympic gold in some sort of yacht-based activity, rather than just a vain hope that he won’t end up nicking cars and spraying graffiti tags onto footbridges). Or perhaps Guernsey just attracts a certain type of prick.

I can understand the need to some sort of pushiness. I can understand that, if you’ve splashed out a not inconsiderable amount of money on a ‘cello and numerous lessons for Little Sebastian, it’s not unreasonable to expect the little brat to practise it once in a while. What I find harder to deal with is when every single activity a child undertakes is seen as an opportunity to crush the opposition – through any means necessary – even at the expense of fun. In fact, if these people suspect their children are having any fun at all I suspect there are sharp words as soon as they get home.

Take Rocquaine Regatta. Now, just to give you a bit of background, this is a local event which takes place on and around a beach on the west coast of Guernsey every year, and features such intellectual pursuits as Hurling the Welly and Tossing the Rolling Pin, a sandcastle competition, and a contest to see who can stay on a pole greased with soap for the longest period of time. In the old days it also featured Piano Smashing and Tomato Throwing, but these have apparently been deemed too dangerous/messy by the organisers. You’d think such an event would be just the place to let kids be kids, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong.

Crowds gather for one of the day's highlights: the annual Hurling the Welly Competition.

So great has the influence of parents been in the past that the annual programme now “respectfully asks parents not to help their children in the building of sandcastles” for the competition. But their power is still very much in evidence. Take the bay swim, the first event of the day where hardy people – or nutters, as I prefer to call them – launch themselves off one beach into the freezing cold sea and peg it across a distance of almost a kilometre to the other beach, rather than use the perfectly adequate, tried and tested method of walking along the road, which would take a fraction of the time. Due to the intensity of this event, only children over the age of 12, with parental consent, and adults can enter. Cue Pushy parent, who thrusts a shivering youth forward.

“How old are you?” I ask the tiny creature, who is nervously chewing his goggles.

“Ten.”

His mother pokes him from behind. “Don’t be so silly. You’re twelve.”

“I’m twelve,” says the child unconvincingly, with a sort of bleak resignation. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“You can’t swim if you’re under twelve,” I tell him.

“He’s an excellent swimmer,” his mother interjects, tut-tutting at my stupidity and whipping the consent form out of my hand, “and his dad’s in one of the guard boats.”

And that, apparently, is that. I continue to give out forms and swimming caps while a middle-aged man jumps the queue and proceeds to stand at my arm criticising me for the next ten minutes, demanding I give him the forms, since he could do the whole thing far more efficiently and swiftly, and “without all this nonsense about rules and insurance.”

I see the small child again at the other end. He hauls himself out of the water absolutely shaking with cold and exhaustion, and his mother congratulates him... after she’s checked his time with me, and confirmed that he did it faster than his brother did the previous year. I wouldn’t like to have been his brother when he got home.

The ordinary swimming races are even worse. They start with a spotty lad of about ten announcing that he’s the best swimmer in the whole island his age group, then demanding I high five him in recognition of this great feat. In the under 9s race a mother is seen physically pushing her tiny daughter towards the uninviting sea. The tiny daughter proceeds to come last and cries. I tell her she did really well, at which point her mother demands angrily, “can’t you at least give her a medal? She’s only 5.” Um, no. Because she didn’t win. And she’s five?! In the Tug of War, a mother is seen balling at the Under 10s team, screaming “One, Two, Three, PULL!!!!” In the talent contest, I hear a mother say “if you don’t want to go onstage that’s fine, but just remember, you won’t get an ice cream.” (She did go up, but was beaten by a child whose talent consisted of “making my arm make a fart noise”.)

Worst of all, though, has to be the Mini Macho competition. I’d previously thought of this as one of the cuter stalwart events, where boys of all shapes and sizes are almost guaranteed to have in common the fact that none really attracts the description “macho”. (“What’s your name?” “Julian”. “What’s your favourite subject at school, Julian?” “Art.") They are told to show their muscles, walk around the “stage” (this is basically the back of a trailer) for a bit then the tallest gets a medal and the gawky kid with the glasses and the blonde curls gets a “special” rosette. Yesterday, though, as the enthusiastic youngsters bounded up on stage, I heard one mother saying “right, Harvey, now remember what we practiced. Show me your muscles” Harvey obediently flexed a puny arm. “Now your routine”. The boy jumped up and down like someone trying to do the Haka. “Did you do your push-ups this morning?”

He lost. And he was 8. I didn’t see him after that, so can only assume his mother took him round the back of the stage and shot him.