A book called Love Bombing by the psychologist Oliver James found me. It offers an opportunity to "reset the emotional thermostat" of your child. This involves spending a period of time alone with your child, offering him or her unlimited love and control. You explain to your child that the two of you are going to spend time together, one to one, and have a lot of fun. Your child decides what he wants and when he wants it, within reason. You give the message that this is going to be a Big Event: It's Coming Soon ... How Exciting! The child then draws up a list of things to do. It doesn't matter what it involves: the key is that your child has chosen it. I thought this sounded worth a go.
So I put this to my twin sons who were seven years old at the time - the offer was a weekend away for each of them on their own with me, anywhere, doing anything. They would be in charge. Where would they want to go? What would they want to do? I expected to have to moderate their choices - no, sadly this time we can't go to the moon for the weekend in a rocket, or to Disneyland Florida, or to see the pyramids in Egypt or in a hot air balloon over the jungle.
They conferred - just to check one wouldn't be getting away with something amazing while the other was settling for something more modest. These proactive steps to rule out the possibility of one-upmanship happens all the time.
"We've decided" they announced. "We want to go to the seaside. In a campervan". Nice. No moderation required there.
So we found some weekends that were free, one in June and one in September. We found campervans that were available for hire and we found a lovely campsite in Norfolk. We were all set.
For the first weekend I hired an original 1978 left-hand drive VW Westfalia van. Old VWs are quite hard to drive! Changing gears is a full body experience and I'm not even kidding. As we pulled - stalled - out of our north London neighbourhood O asked me, "Mummy do you know how to drive this thing?". Nope.