Every office in the land harbours parents who are exasperated especially by boys

Every office in the land harbours parents who are exasperated, especially by boys, who are arrogant, rude, boastful and undisciplined, leaving their parents too tired, too guilt-ridden or too bewildered by conflicting child-rearing advice to do anything other than wring their hands with worry The language of civil rights has entered childhood. The fashion industry is increasingly targeting guilty parents and demanding children: it is not uncommon to see children wearing designer jeans and the latest trainers that they will soon grow out of.Pre-Christmas toy advertising is designed to strike terror into the hearts of parents and make their children more demanding and greedy. No longer subjected to the discipline of the evening family meal, the cradle of manners and civil behaviour, one in three people eats his or her dinner on his lap in front of the TV. They watch, on average, between four and six hours of television a day. Guilt-ridden, they then indulge them with gifts and indiscipline.

Many of today's children, the majority that are not being subject to violence and intimidation, are spoilt rotten.Reports show that teenagers are increasingly obese and slothful. Forced to work long hours, they pack them off to childminders or nannies, grandmothers or next-door neighbours. Indeed, much of the time it seems that parents themselves are suffering a crisis of self-esteem.Parents now spend far less time with their children than they did 10 years ago. The Children Act of 1989, created to give children much-needed protection against abuse, in the process legalised the ideology: the child comes first.But while the nurturing of self-esteem in children is now accepted as a requisite of their development, the social and economic demands on overworked, harassed parents often prevent them from putting this theory into practice where it matters most - in the home. Today we are equally sensitive to the needs of our children, painfully aware that a cherished and well-behaved child has a better chance of growing into a balanced, loving and law-abiding adult. Competition, the school felt, demeaned the children who did not win. Since you were not allowed to have winners, you were not allowed to award prizes."The Child is father of the Man," wrote Wordsworth.

We are so worried about their fragile confidence that their self- esteem must become the object of government policy.Yet not everyone agrees with this trend. One mother recently took her son away from his state school in north London and uprooted him to the countryside and a private primary school after discovering that the state school had a sports day with no prizes. Today school reports clothe criticism in jargon, avoiding any language that might appear overtly critical. The days when one PE teacher at a Liverpool comprehensive entered nothing but an exclamation mark on the report card of one chubby under-achiever are no longer tolerated.We have become so concerned about the risk of damaging children physically, emotionally and spiritually that we are unsure how to discipline them, uncertain how far we can push them, doubtful of what we can demand from them. Its findings make disquieting reading: babies under a year old are four times as likely as any other group to be murder victims; one in six children still suffers severe violent punishment. It is not just children's physical safety that is under threat, but also their self-esteem. The Commission on Children and Violence yesterday added its voice to the conventional modern view by calling for a national strategy to tackle violence against children, including a ban on smacking.

The golden age of innocence, when children could happily trust and respect adults, is long gone. It has become a conventional wisdom that children have become so vulnerable that they can only be nurtured with the protection of special rights and codes. With minor adjustments these certificates were approved by the Court of Appeal.. Childhood is endangered, under threat from child abuse and violence on television, drugs and under-age sex, family break-up and separation.

We referred to Public Immunity Certificates signed by ministers Kenneth Baker and Peter Lilley at the trial and by Michael Howard and Douglas Hurd at the appeal. At Mr Howard's request, we are happy to make clear that the PII certificates that he and Mr Hurd signed invited the Court of Appeal to order full disclosure of relevant documents, excluding only sensitive names and references not affecting the case. On Wednesday we reported the Ordtech appeal in which the convictions of four men for supplying arms to Iraq were overturned on grounds that vital documents had been withheld by the Government. Talks between the authorities and the guerillas had been cut off since 19 September and the fresh contact signals hope for the captives, who face a freezing Himalayan winter.. Women who had had their breasts off would tell you and it became like a self-help group.". Four hostages held by guerillas since early July in Kashmir have not been harmed, although one British and one US hostage are ill, according to the Indian authorities.