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You might have seen this in the news (more details here) but basically parents are now being asked to follow a 5-a-day parenting plan.
The five daily things are:
Read to your child for 15 minutes
Play with your child on the floor for 10 minutes
Talk with your child for 20 minutes (with the TV off)
Adopt a positive attitude and take every opportunity to praise
Give a child nutritious food.
Ok so those are the five. I think the hardest one of all is number four. When you are busy and stressed it would be perfectly natural to snap and say "what are you whining about? you have had your 15 minutes of reading and 10 minutes of playing on the floor so just shut up and let me get on with the shopping list" whereas number four lasts all day every day 
At One Space we believe that praise is indeed one of the most effective parenting techniques but we acknowledge that it is harder than it seems!
What do you all think of the 5-a-day?
Ha ha ha Bubblegum, loads of good idea there (apart from the cheap cider 
) And yes! Good to get them to help with the shopping list too, as well as the washing up pf course.
I suppose it depends on whether you like being told what to do. A young new parent, with worries about their skills couild well use this as a blueprint, which is good, but we all parent in different ways.
Louise "A young new parent, with worries about their skills couild well use this as a blueprint, which is good, but we all parent in different ways."
Good point, who is this guide written for - if you're following, yay you, give y'self another slap on the back, and if you're not? Like Bubblegum says, it's just another way to make us feel bad about ourselves. so let's look at this... Read to your child for 15 minutes Easy as pie if you make it part of nap / bed routine. I started to read to S at prolly 6 weeks old and maybe took a short break when his attention wouldn't hold around the year mark. I don't know any other child who's talking is better than his at his age. But with E I have found it a lot harder to give her the same input I gave him, and she often reads her own books at bed times and it's harder to draw her in although her language is developing at a similar rate so no need to worry, but there were no outside interrupting factors in this, some households / people are different / have a different relationship with books and people. Play with your child on the floor for 10 minutes Should be common sense, but again, different situations, constraints make this difficult ... shocking really .. but true - you have health visitor on your case, you know that at any time during a two week period a social worker might drop by, stress goes up, you focus on keeping the house neat and tidy, you don't have the emotional space to play with your child. I had plans of teaching my kids a foreign language before they were born - setting a time in the day to spend on a specific language but that kind of went out the window when the washing cleaning tidying cooking dressing hit me. I still day dream of partitioning the day into orderly dedicated times to do this and that but i know i wouldn't follow it. ... have i played with kids today on floor for 10 mins? No. I read and sang to them before bed time from the floor - both sitting on lap to read story. I traveled to an activity where we made paper plate photo frames and snake paper chains, but E didn't get the quality time i think she needed today, and in honesty, most days misses out on quality time that S got in bags at her age. And I can see her suffering for it. But an 18 month gap with little to no childcare or friends and family to regularly depend upon plus a single mum? ok, maybe if i didn't have depression on top of this I would be the super mum I was with just S ... but Sh*t Just remembered I've still got to take washing to tumble dryier before it starts stinking.... Talk with your child for 20 minutes (with the TV off) I try to have a gap in the day without tv on, but honestly i like it's background noise to keep my own sanity. even if the kids weren't in the house, i'd have it on. I do try and LISTEN to whatever and whenever my children try/accomplish saying something. and I think this is more valuable than talking at/around them. Adopt a positive attitude and take every opportunity to praise :) Made me laugh yesterday... we haven't had a house day in ages, rushing here and there for day trips and house viewings hasn't left much spare, and just somehow got to after lunch with no plans made and looked at the clouds and decided not to get dressed - altho S had already(! :)). 'That's naughty - you and E should get dressed!' 'Where are we going today' 'I want to go somewhere new!' "We're not going out today - it's raining." My usual PMA came rebounding to kick me in the teeth: 'That's okay - We just put wellies on!' We did... played in garden for a bit... but I acheived a no getting dressed day:) Kinda depressing as well tho... Give a child nutritious food. ... I've got stuck in a pattern of Porridge, honey sandwiches, fish fingers chips and broccolli. and desert. like every day. actually think we're starting to swap the fingers for sausages... Cooking meals to freazer them is something i've never been good with, and the kids never seem to eat much of my cooking - their loss - and i hate to cook just for me and i like them to have a good nights sleep, which means giving them something i know 9/10 time's they'll eat... But on the nutritious point - a crying kid on the bus? 99% of passengers would be glad to see it given a lollipop/sweets/crisps/choc anything to quieten them. again the same on a day trip - your one year old starts crying cos they see some other kid having this or that treat and not understanding that they have to eat their cheese sandwiches first... same problem. half the fruit ( grapes, raisens) that kids like is packed full of sugar anyway!
Do you think expensive cider is better?
Will try to do all these things with my lot tomorrow. That should be fun! They'll think I've gone mad!
But yes, when they were little I tried to do all those things (didn't know this was a guideline, mind). And often they had to share the play/story - the talking could easily take longer, depending on the child!
Good comments, guys 
I don't know what everyone elses kids are like but when mine say... "Daddy I'm hungry" what they realy mean is, I want sweets, cakes, buscuits and not some of your lovingly prepaired healthy homemade cooking stuff.
Another thing... my son claims to not like walnuts and so I regularly grind up a hand full in my pestle and motar and add them to what ever it is I'm making, be it a sandwich, a pesto or what ever... and then when he's finished I happily inform him he's just eaten walnuts!
This means that when ever I cook something he spends the first five minutes dissecting it looking for walnuts, onions and tomatoes (two other things he claims not to like, despite eating them EVERY day in some form or other)... and going, what's this? what's this? to which I reply "food"
My eldest used to be a real so and so for not eating vegetables. I therefore used to mash up carrots to put in spag bol, mash cauliflower to combine with potatoes on top of cottage pie (little cheese topping to disguise taste) and tell him the green things in a stir fry were "pak choi" which he thought was posh enough to try, even though it was really only shredded cabbage 
He he, fussy children, now there's a thread!
No1 son was eating whatever I gave him till he was about 3. Then he only wanted chips. Oh, or jam sandwiches.
No2 son still loves only beige food (he's 16, I thought he'd have grown out of it now!). So chips, chees pizza, garlic bread, beans on toast (tomato sauce is the only splash of colour he'll have!), biscuits, cripss.... McDs and similar.... He claims he'll eat fruit, but he'll actually only do it once a month to do me a favour...
No3 son eats. But apparently I don't ever buy enough. Appart from the vegetarian episode (which he stuck to for a year, despite his friends saying veggie is for wusses) he's always eaten everything.
Daughter eats, too, but preferable proper cooked food, not ready meals. Although she is partial to a treat from the colonel....
Hopeful!
My daugher ate what ever she was given untill she was about three or four as well, now she doesn't like much and what little she does changes from day to day.
I do give in from time to time and get them what they want but for the most part I just cook what I want and they can eat or not, I don't make an issue of it but if they ask for something later I say no, generally.
They'll eat what ever is put in front of them when they are hungry.
: )
Yeah, that sounds about right. If they're hungry they'll eat. Children who are offered food won't starve.
Interestingly, there was an experiment years and years ago, where children were at a summercamp for 6 weeks. Food was always presented as a buffet, with all things available from sweets, cakes etc. to the really healthy salads and vegetables. During the first week, most children went for the sweets and/or crisps etc. But after a while they got really fed up with it and started eating healthy things without any prompting, and by the end of the 6 weeks pretty much everyone ate a balanced diet!
That sounds good.
Like your DoppelMe pic, by the way, Hopeful
I think its a perfectly reasonable and I would have thought a bare minimum that you should be doing with your children.
I know your only joking Louise but on that example it could be used as an opportunity to do something with your child by getting them to help with the shopping list : )
What bugs me is the fact that groups of people sit about drawing up plans and guidelines and start telling you what you must and must not do and then if you don't do all of them you start thinking oh no I'm a bad parent.
For example, you don't have to sit down and play with your child on the floor, what's wrong with sitting on a chair and talking, or going for a walk and talking and exploring nature, or sitting at a table and drawing, going for a walk and taking pictures or sketching. What about treating your children as just another person living in the house with you and involving them in everything you do.
AND! everyone should throw their TVs out of the house, though of course being sure to dispose of them responsible in accordance with what ever green policy their local council implements.
Another thought... you could give your child a piece of fruit or vegetable every time you do one of those things, thus killing two birds with one stone : ) you could get all that over and done with in less than an hour and then have the rest of the day to sit about watching day time TV and drinking cheep* cider.
*cheap!