Ice-cream for breakfast? Of course, poppet! Draw on the walls and swear? How creative! Brace yourself to meet... The mother who NEVER says No to her children



Bea Marshall’s elder child was only three when he woke up one morning and decided he’d quite like ice cream for breakfast.

Most parents would balk at such a notion and serve up healthier, more traditional options of toast, porridge or cereal instead.

But not Bea. The writer, speaker and parenting coach scooped a large spoonful of ice cream into a bowl and presented it to her delighted son. Unsurprisingly, he asked for — and received — the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next.

What on earth was she thinking? Bea is an advocate of controversial ‘Yes Parenting’, a rather hippyish model of raising children which aims to accommodate the child — whatever their request.

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Anything goes: Bea indulges in a little ice-cream for breakfast with her sons Peep, left, and Jos

It means the 36-year-old from Sheffield routinely allows her two sons Peep, now nine, and Jos, eight, to choose their own bedtimes. If they want to play computer games rather than come to the table and eat their evening meal, that’s fine too.

The boys can crayon on the walls of their home. If they don’t fancy doing their homework, they can watch movies back to back. They’re even allowed to swear at their mother.

‘I aim to say yes to anything my children want, whether that’s sweets before dinner, drawing on the walls or watching a film at 10pm,’ she says. ‘I encourage my sons to make their own decisions.’

' I aim to say yes to anything my children want, whether that’s sweets before dinner, drawing

on the walls or watching a film

at 10pm'

It all sounds alarmingly lax, not to mention a bit bonkers. Bea, a highly eloquent but undeniably bohemian mother, uses words like ‘resolving’, ‘freedom’, ‘choices’ and the phrase ‘opening up the conversation’ a lot — terms that will jar with parents who believe all children need to learn is that ‘no means no’.

After all, boundaries and rules are surely essential tools when it comes to raising our children to behave correctly and be respectful to others.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of schools inspection body Ofsted, agrees. Last week he criticised the ‘chattering classes’ who believe children should be allowed to develop naturally.

He said parents should be issued with a checklist of ‘essential skills’ that children under five need, including understanding the word ‘no’ and the borders it sets for behaviour.

Not something that’s going to happen any time soon with Bea’s kids.

On the morning I visit Bea and her boys, I reel when I compare her style of parenting with my own. I mentally tot up how often I say no to my 19-month-old identical twin girls: no to standing up on the high chair, no to eating the head off a tulip, no to taking a crayon into the living room. I quickly lose count.



VIDEO: Bea Marshall on ITV This Morning



The boys play video games while Bea reads her book at their home in Sheffield. The mother says she decided upon 'Yes' parenting as she 'didn't want to control' her children

The word doesn’t pass her lips once and yet the scene that greets me at the family’s three-bedroom terrace seems, on the surface, quite serene.

Both boys are sitting contentedly at the kitchen table eating breakfast — cereal for Jos and eggs and bacon for Peep. There’s not a scoop of ice cream in sight and the boys are a picture of health.

There’s little sign of rebellion or rudeness apart from the occasional bit of toilet humour — not wholly uncommon in boys of eight and nine. Rather than sitting goggle-eyed at a computer game, they are engrossed in putting the finishing touches to Easter bonnets, for a competition at school.

Can all this be for show, I wonder?

Bea insists she didn’t tell the boys I was a journalist and said I was as a friend who’d popped round for coffee.

What would she have done if the boys hadn’t felt like getting up for school? Would she have allowed them to have the day off? ‘It doesn’t happen often but when it does, I say: “Come on guys, we need to go,” and they go. If they wanted to talk about why they didn’t want to go to school, we’d open up a conversation about it but in the end, they would go.’

Hmmm.

Bea says by saying 'Yes' to her sons, pictured, she encourages them to make her own decisions

So what drove Bea to become an advocate of Yes Parenting? She was brought up in a middle-class family in Cheltenham with her brother and sister — a house where no meant no. Her father was a town planner and her mother was a teacher.



Educated at private school, Bea met her now ex-husband — a designer she prefers not to name — at a conference. They married when she was 23 and Peep was born three years later.

The marriage ended in divorce a year ago, but Bea insists her parenting style was not to blame. She does admit, however, that she has always found the conflicting advice around bringing up children bewildering. ‘I wanted to feed my son on demand but everyone was saying I should try to feed him every four hours,’ she says. ‘He was a very colicky baby and was getting distressed.

‘So, at around eight weeks I thought: “No, I’m going to listen to my baby and trust him. If he’s hungry, I’ll feed him.”

‘As a mother and baby you do a great job in the nine months of pregnancy. Then, suddenly, when the baby is born, the premise that it can’t communicate with its mother seems to me to be a Western lie that is being fuelled. The worst way to learn about parenting is through a “To Do” book.’

Nineteen months later, the couple’s second son Jos arrived, by which time Peep was turning into a typical, wilful toddler. ‘He started doing what toddlers do — like hitting or snatching — and I didn’t quite know how to deal with it,’ she says. ‘Everyone around me was doing the naughty step, time out or getting them to say sorry. I tried these things, but they didn’t work for Peep. I don’t think he was particularly naughty but I felt a huge pressure from society for my child to be “the good little boy”.

‘There’s a fear in parenting that pervades through everything. At first, I listened to all the advice.’

Bea tried to stick to a ‘Super-nanny’-style strict regime but Peep, she says, didn’t respond.

‘I remember tearful conversations with my best friend when nothing seemed to work. I was trying “time out” and the “naughty step”, but Peep wasn’t being this super-compliant child that I thought he should be.

‘I once put him on the naughty step — I can’t even remember why — and as he was waiting, he ripped off the wallpaper. I was furious, but I look back and realise he wasn’t being wilful. He didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, and when he saw the loose strip of wallpaper, he was just playing with it. He was only two.’

But when Peep turned three, says Bea, she had her ‘epiphany’.

‘There was one week where three things happened and I realised I couldn’t keep doing the Supernanny thing,’ she says.

‘The first was when I heard Peep ask one of my friends for a drink and he didn’t say “please”. I rushed over but my friend said: “Bea, it’s all right, I’ve never taught my children how to say please or thank you — they learn it over time because they watch what you do.”

' Friends who have them over to play always report back how polite and

lovely they are'

‘A couple of days later, a friend said a similar thing about “sorry”. Finally, I watched a mother and child having a tussle over whether or not he should wear his coat. His mother thought he would get cold if he didn’t wear it. As I watched them I had a lightbulb moment and thought: “Don’t make him wear it. If he gets cold, he will come and get his coat.”

‘It was a real turning point. I realised I didn’t want to control my children and started looking online for positive parenting models.’

Coming under many names such as Positive Parenting, Peaceful Parenting and Playful Parenting, Yes Parenting encourages parents to think about options before automatically saying no to a child’s request.

One study estimates that the average child hears the word ‘no’ or ‘don’t’ more than 148,000 times while growing up, compared with just a few thousand ‘yes’ messages.

Bea took to Yes Parenting in the extreme, which she admits was a mistake. ‘I started saying yes to everything and Peep went through what I can only describe as a binge period,’ she says. ‘He wanted ice cream every day instead of cereal, he’d fill up on sweets and choose a bowl of custard before his dinner.

‘He’d force himself to stay awake as suddenly I wasn’t setting bedtime any more and would watch cartoons for hours. After about two months I thought: “Oh no, have I made a huge mistake here?” but I kept reading and trusting it and it worked.

‘After three months, Peep decided he didn’t want ice cream for his breakfast any more and now has it only very occasionally. Even then he’ll only have about one scoop and ask for fruit or yoghurt instead.

‘Now both my boys have very healthy attitudes towards food. Neither overeats. They rarely ask for seconds — because they know they can have them if they want them.

‘They have fewer sweets and treats than most children because these things are not presented as treats.’

Bea says Jos swore at her when she was too busy to find him a toy - but instead of getting cross, she listened to his concerns and resolved the situation

Other parents will be horrified to learn this freedom even extends to swearing. ‘I don’t swear a lot but I do swear and I know I’m not going to be able to stop myself from swearing if I drop something,’ she says.

‘Jos quite recently told me to f*** off when I didn’t have time to help him find a toy. But I don’t get cross. I understand it’s their way of showing emotion and expressing their anger. I’ll say: “Wow, you sound really angry, what’s going on?” Then I do my best to resolve that situation.’

Not suprisingly, Bea’s parenting style has attracted a lot of scorn and criticism, as she has gone public with her inflammatory views. She says the most vicious are those who have never met her or her children.

She insists there have been no problems with the boys at school, or socially. ‘Friends who have them over to play always report back how polite and lovely they are,’ says Bea. ‘Some even say their children behave better when my boys are around.’

But some members of her extended family have their doubts: ‘My parents particularly struggle with the whole “please” and “thank you” thing but the boys realise this and make more of an effort when they’re with their grandparents.

‘The other day I heard Peep say to Jos: “Even if we’ve said it and Granny hasn’t heard it, we need to say it again.” It shows they’ve got the idea that we adapt our behaviour to our environment.’

The mother appearing on ITV's Lorraine last month to promote her controversial method of parenting

Of course she must have to say no to some things — if the boys ask her to drive a car for instance? To drink a beaker of vodka? To ride their bike along a cliff edge? What if they asked her to buy them a crocodile?

She laughs: ‘I’d make a game out of it,’ she says. ‘I’d say: “Come on then, let’s go to the zoo. How much do you think a crocodile would cost? Can we afford it and where would we keep it?” They’d soon work out that it wasn’t possible.

‘As for driving, they know they can’t drive until they are 17 because there are laws in place. It’s the same with drinking and smoking. They know they can’t do that because they’re not old enough.

‘With regards to drinking, we have a “one sip approach” — something their dad came up with. The boys are allowed one sip of whatever we’re drinking, but they don’t always ask.’

She rejects the idea that her parenting style is lazy. Then, an argument breaks out between the boys. Instead of telling them to be quiet, her response is something resembling a UN peacekeeping summit. Talk about time-consuming.

And, while she’s undoubtedly close to her boys, I ask if she worries that she is more like a friend to them than a parent. For once, she answers with a resounding ‘no’.

‘I want to be this amazing person in their life and if, when they’re older, they choose to say mum is one of my friends, that’s fine. But I’m not seeking it out.