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How Not to Raise a Perfect Child

On sale

7th October 1999

Price: £6.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340751374

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A perfect child:

* Dresses neatly and practises the violin before breakfast

* Comes top of the class and is captain of everything

* Is unfailingly obedient and sweet-tempered

* Is a perfect credit to its perfect mother

A real child:

* Prefers shoelaces undone and mismatched socks

* Shouts ‘Bum!’ at Granny

* Turns breakfast and bedtime into a battleground

* Is the normal offspring of imperfect parents

With affectionate lack of illusion and a refreshing honesty about her own shortcomings, Libby Purves examines the pleasures and pitfalls of raising children from three to eight years old. Playgroup, starting school, rude words, pets – all these topics are tackled with frank good humour and down-to-earth advice.

Best of all is her reassuring reminder that there is no such thing as a perfect child.

What's Inside

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Reviews

Elizabeth Buchan, The Times
Praise for More Lives Than One: 'An idiosyncratic blend of her journalistic voice ... With the skills of a writer who understands the proper balance in a novel between issue and narrative. ... This is her best novel ... [and] will find an answering echo in many readers'
Woman & Home
All the compassion characteristic of her writing in her previous novels and columns. ... This is a humane and perceptive novel
The Times Educational Supplement
A good story, crisply and lightly told, that touches on many of teaching's current preoccupations and dilemmas and that grows in depth as it unfolds
The Lady
The kind of book that you race to finish and then think about for a long time afterwards
Daily Express
Libby Purves' prose is clean, sharp and in touch with things that matter