The Anonymous Widower

Bonkers Babysitting Rules

I was born just a couple of years after the end of the Second World War and my friend Richard Plumb was born a week later.  We were friends for years, until we went our separate ways as teenagers and my parents moved to Felixstowe from Cockfosters.

Sadly, Richard’s father had died when he was a couple of years old and as his mother had to work, there was an awful lot of sharing of child-care between his mother, his grandparents and my mother. I grew up believing that this was the way that normal people brought up their children.

Later, when our three boys were young, we often looked after other peoples’ children and they used to do the same for us.  In one case, one of the kids, Patrick Ford, was one of the first coeliacs I ever came across. His mother was actually a White Minstrel!  I can remember the rules that Heinz beans were good and others were bad.  It’s still the same today and even their beans with sausages are gluten-free.

But now apparently, the rules on childminders now mean that all of these informal arrangements have to be registered with Ofsted. Bonkers.

I have heard elsewhere on the news that there are now another 800,000 civil servants in this country.  To me that is 800,000 too many!

September 28, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | News | Children