Why I love Robbie Williams' one-word parenting advice - Christa Ackroyd

He who then went on a well documented downward spiral into depression and substance abuse, addicted to cocaine and by his own admission performing to thousands while having a mental breakdown as the rest of us danced to his tunes.

And yet this week I was struck by his words when he described the battle he and everyone else it seems is having with children about having, or rather not having, a mobile phone of their own.

And I loved his response.

It echoed what my mother used to say when I was young, inexperienced, but thought I knew everything, when the world was far less complicated than it is now and I used the reasoning I suspect is still being used in thousands of homes across the country every day, ‘but everyone else does.’ You know how it goes.

The response I got from my mum well used to my dramatic outpourings that life wasn’t worth living unless I could have this or that, do one thing or another, was sharp and to the point. No. One word.

Perhaps the hardest word to say especially if you are a parent who has the wherewithal to grant every wish and like Robbie give them everything they want and more.

But still his response to the request for a phone was unequivocally that. And when they moaned about it – ‘tough’ was all he said.

Even Hugh Grant, who came to parenting late in life is calling out his children’s school for, in his words, boasting that every pupil would be given a tablet to use in class and do their homework on. ‘No!’, he shouted ‘We spend all our time trying to get them off the damn things.’

This week I spent every day with a group of children and ponies at Pony Club Camp. I make no apologies if that sounds middle class, snotty or Enid Blytonesque.

I don’t have to make excuses for the parents who have decided this is the way to ensure their little girls remain little girls for as long as they possibly can. And let me tell you it was not posh.

Ponies from loving supporters of the club, the same club my daughter attended 30 years ago, brought old timers out of retirement, lent those that had been grown out of, gave lifts in battered horse boxes or trailers to to ensure that for a few days at least these 21 little girls from the age of five to 14 thought of nothing else but the welfare of the animals in their care.

Not a mobile phone in sight. Not even from us who were there to supervise, we were all too busy by far to even charge them up. And it was bliss.

They were up at 6am getting ready for the day ahead.

Once at a kindly local stables, they mucked out, swept up, listened to the points of a horse and the parts of a saddle, fed, watered mucked out and swept up again, groomed, plaited, and eventually rode, returning home shattered to take their tack to pieces, clean it thoroughly, throw their pony club sweatshirts and jodhpurs in the washer before crawling into bed to do it all again the next day.

And they loved it. And so did I. The TV wasn’t turned on once for four days.

Never ever have I seen the girls so animated, so relaxed, so excited and so energised.

As for me well even though I kid myself it is for work, or home improvements, or keeping contact with friends, my screen time was down to almost zilch too, leaving friends to question if I was okay. I had been silent for four days.

Unheard of. But I was more than okay, positively buzzing in fact after a week in the fresh air, and a few days full of nothing but the excited chatter of lucky little girls and the smell of their ponies.

I know my girls are lucky. I always wanted a pony but my parents could never afford one, so I mucked out a dozen horses at the local riding school in exchange for one hours riding a week.

I know times are tough and ponies and school activities are out or range for many. But the principles remain the same.

If you take off the cost of all the expensive electronic gear, the cost of a mobile phone which they shouldn’t even be getting and perhaps look at a kitten, a riding lesson, walking the neighbour’s dog, growing sunflowers, yes making stinky rose petal perfume, then anything and everything is better than letting them get stuck into social media, Tik-Tok or worse still the predatory world of online groups and messaging.

In Australia a social media ban for young people under 16 will come into force in December. It includes YouTube, a move it’s parent company Google claims is unjust. But I agree.

We have to do something. What is happening is terrifying and if the companies that own such sites won’t do anything to stop the algorithms that shove often harmful content, in the faces of our young people, we as adults and yes, the government has to step in.

Already in this country Nigel Farage is threatening to repeal the recent Online Safety Act if he comes to power claiming it threatens free speech, free thinking and does little to protect children who he says will simply go and seek the company of the dark web.

Well they can’t if they don’t have a mobile phone can they ? Or at least the point of having one, the secrecy, the feeling of being grown up long before you are, will become pretty much null and void if we ban those companies from targeting them.

In Australia pretty much everything apart from health, wellbeing and education will be off limits to children. It is a brave move and many, including my soon to be 14 year old granddaughter who lives there, will moan and whinge that it is not fair. But in the words of Robbie Williams, tough.

Yes my daughter in Australia is a very responsible parent. Yes she tries to safeguard the time my granddaughter spends online and has all the parental control settings turned on.

She regularly checks her phone, checks her child’s online viewing and it’s pretty satisfied all is well. But she cannot police the phones of her friends.

She cannot look over her shoulder 24 hours a day to ensure content which shouldn’t even be there is not slipping through.

That’s not freedom, that’s justified paranoia about what she may find there.

Not every child can spend a carefree few days grooming ponies and enjoying innocent times, but every child can find their freedom to be online abused and become the target of grooming of an entirely different nature if we do not toughen up on companies who say they care but do little to show that they do.

Too many children have lost their lives because of the lack of online safety.

We as adults know the genie with disastrous consequences for hundreds and thousands of young people, who beg they just want to be like everyone else, to have a phone when they can hardly tie their own shoelaces and will, as ever scream it’s not fair when we say no.

Absolutely not. Tough.