Dodgy adults

People tell their children to behave like an adult - or behave like a grown-up. Either way that leaves plenty of scope as the behaviour of most adults is far from exemplary. The reality is that adults:

• Lie
• Make things up
• Commit crimes
• Drink too much
• Eat too much
• Smoke
• Drive dangerously
• Sell addictive drugs
• Start wars
• Cheat on their spouses

If anything, children should be telling adults to behave more like children. Because most of those adult tendencies/ nasty habits are absent in children, who still boast healthy and harmless lifestyles. They may lie or make things up, but that's about it.

Adults are in fact a thoroughly bad influence on children, and nothing like as superior as they would like to think. Unfortunately there are adults everywhere you look and children are easily swayed by them.

The average adult, if promoted as a role model for children, would probably be horrified. They would say, for goodness sake don't copy me with all my neuroses and all my failings. Find somebody more worthy of inspiring you.

So the immediate question when told to behave like an adult would have to be - which adult? Do I behave like Uncle Charlie, who drinks like a fish, flirts outrageously and drives like a maniac? Or do I behave like Aunt Delia, who's sensible and considerate and kind?

When I was young, I was indeed inspired by a lot of adults. Not because they were adults but because they had qualities that I admired and wanted for myself. I was especially influenced by an English teacher who made mastering English a whole lot of fun. Yes, he was an adult but that was irrelevant.