William Hanson's on how to raise your children

William Hanson's on how to raise your children

Today we turn our attentions to how to raise your children. It’s not particularly difficult if you make sure the child knows who’s boss (you, not it).

But there are some more subtle parenting techniques to be conscious of if your child is going to grow and rise up through the dregs of society and into the glittering social nirvana.

Here are the milestones you need to be hitting.

Femail's etiquette expert William Hanson knew how to entertain even as a small child 

Etiquette expert William Hanson reveals his step by step guide to raising your child like the upper classes and says that dummies should be off the menu 

Before the birth: Get a nanny 

Frankly the last thing you or your spouse will want to do after the birth is hunt around for someone you like and trust to look after your children when you’re both too busy or away on official visits overseas (unless you adopt the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attitude and use official trips abroad as family holidays). 

Norland nannies are still very smart, or - smarter still - to bring back your own nanny. That provides a wonderful continuity - the zenith in being a Trad. Brit. Middle class folk usually have an ‘au pair’, and ‘Nanny’ to the lower classes means one of their grandmothers.  

Upon birth: Parental names 

Right from the word go, set the ground rules as to what your sprig has to call you. Insist they call you Mummy and Daddy - although Dad is now fine as upper boys get hormonal. 

Mum and Dad is lower middle class and below. Trendy lefty parents, and women who are in denial about growing old, insist on their children calling them by their first names. This is definitely out. 

Similarly, it’s Aunt Susan and not Auntie Susan; Granny and Grandad/Grandpa. Upon birth: Get them on a list for a top school As soon as the child is born, fathers, put pen to paper and write to your old school (or another, if yours wasn't good enough) and request your child’s name be put on the waiting list. 

William says that when it comes to parental names Mummy and Daddy are most acceptable

This is essential. Then return to the ward and tend to your wife. 

From birth: Breastfeeding 

Still a social hot potato, but breast-feeding is ideally done in private. 

While a mother arguably has every right to whip out a bosom in public to feed her child, the whole process can make well-heeled observers uncomfortable, and good manners generally state that anything that does unnerve or upset people should be avoided. Mothers - don’t be too prissy here. 

If you need to leave a throng of a party or gathering to do this you must call a spade a spade. 

No euphemisms for what’s about to happen all owed - that's too lower middle. Upper and upper-middle parents do not believe in feeding the baby on demand: feed it every time it cries and demands attention, they believe, and it will forever be demanding and tiresome. 

Six months: Have a Christening not a baby shower 

Refined folk, when invited to something called a ‘baby shower’, will have no idea what you are on about. The top tier will show a total lack of knowledge of such things, as within high circles they are a little comme il faut. There are two levels of baby showers: terrible & ghastly. 

The terrible ones will take place in someone’s house. The ghastly ones take place at a hired venue where you will unfortunately find yo urself in something called a ‘function room’. 

When it comes to breastfeeding William says this should ideally be done in private - and if you have to leave a social gathering to feed you shouldn't lie about it

Christenings and Christening parties are much less cringe-inducing affairs and by far superior socially and usually take place six to nine months after the birth. Non-religious naming ceremonies are decidedly new-age middle class and not encouraged. 

At Christening: Godparents 

By the time the Christening day has arrived, posh parents will have nominated three godparents (two women and one man if the infant is a girl, two men and one woman if a boy). 

They will be respectable types - possibly with grander titles than your own - there to guide and steer the child morally until they are †˜of age’. One of the godmothers may way be slightly mad and live with a thousand cats. 

After the Christening: Gifts 

You’ll easy know if the guests who attended the Christening are up to social scratch by whether they brought good solid presents for the baby. 

Cases of vintage port or wine from the year of the babe’s birth, solid silver photo frames or trinkets are all top drawer stuff. If anyone brings a silver napkin ring, be worried. 

Until they turn seven: No long trousers 

Little boys should look like little boys - that has and always will be the attitude of the upper and upper middle classes. 

At six months old you should consider a christening, not a baby shower, and by this time you should have nominated three godparents 

Patrician mothers have been known to remove their children from pre-prep schools when the school changes their uniform for the under sevens from cute flannel shorts to trousers. 

Trousers on young boys look too ‘suburban’ for their refined tastes. (This is a tradition that all dates back to the old-fashioned breeches boys used to wear.) 

Have you ever seen Prince George in trousers? Similarly, little girls should look like little girls. Dresses, knitwear and little bow hair-clips a plenty, please. Babygrows are considered common. 

Throughout infancy: No dummies 

When it comes to rearing your babe, nothing is considered quite as common as giving your child a dummy (which, for transatlantic types is a pacifier). 

You will never see any child of substance with a plastic muzzle in their mouths - they have been brought up well enough to cause little fuss or outcry in public. 

 Two years: Not so terrible after all

If you have set some ground rules from the get go with your child and made them realise that you as parents are boss and your word is final then the much discussed ‘terrible twos’ will not be so bad. 

Causing a scene in public is very declassé: and if one is made, you leave, immediately so you don’t subject others to it. 

 Three years: Socialising

 Children’s social clubs like the trés chic Maggie and Rose in Kensington and Chiswick are thriving, organic Play-Doh scented hubs for infants to start mixing with the right sort of people in safe, friendly environments. 

For bucolic babes outside of London and being raised in the country then it’s off to the church playgroup once or twice a week.

 Four years and up: Allow them to fraternise with the staff 

When the child is walking, talking and more or less holding their own, do not be afraid to let your child go ‘downstairs’ and talk to the cook and any staff that you may have knocking about. 

It gives them good practice with conversation with people from different backgrounds, makes them appreciate the work the staff do, and ultimately helps b uild their confidence - which can only be a good thing. 

Four years: Manners 

Finally, by four they really should not be hiding behind parental legs when meeting new friends or adults - if they do it shows a sheltered, over protected upbringing, which isn’t ideal. 

They should also be ‘topping and tailing’ thank you letters to those who give them presents by this age. 

The parent can write a sentence or two and the child signs their name and writes the recipients’. When they reach six they really need to be writing the whole letter themselves. 

 

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