With literacy rates declining across OECD countries, building healthy habits around books is truly essential. Allowing reading at dinner started as one of those on-the-spot parental solutions. Letting them have a copy of Bunny Vs Monkey or The Beano while they ate seemed like a more ethical solution for keeping them in their chairs for the duration of the meal than, say, duct tape.
For many of us, that compulsive need to touch isn't about poor impulse control. It's about confirmation. It's about making sure the world around us is real, solid, tangible - because somewhere along the line, we learned that the emotional landscape we navigated wasn't.
A child who only hears praise when they perform, who never hears 'I just like having you around' or 'You don't have to do anything special for me to love being your parent,' learns something far more corrosive: that their baseline state is insufficient. The lesson isn't explicit. No parent sits their child down and says, 'You are only lovable when productive.' The lesson is absorbed through thousands of micro-moments.
There's an analogy I've heard many times that may be helpful here: If there are a few poison M&Ms in a bag of 30, should you feel safe eating it? What's three out of 30, right? Is it likely that James or someone else will do something inappropriate? No, but is it impossible? Also no.
I worked with primary school kids who were struggling with home and school life. One little boy, aged seven, had a tough exterior but would listen with rapture during story time.
I want Milton and Goose kitchens to last through all the kids in a family. Then, they can be passed to friends or packed away for the next generation.
