Parental roles

When I was ill as child my mother halved aspirins and mashed them with honey, and doled out quarter-spoons of adult cough syrup. She took pains with medicine. We all survived.

Some weeks back, I did the same. At 2am, I’d given my toddler a quarter-measure of adult cough syrup (I’d run out of baby syrup). Immediately, I regretted it, panicked and drove my son to A&E at the Borders General Hospital in Melrose, fearing a paracetamol overdose.

“He’s fine,” the paediatric nurses told me. “The dose was well within limit.” But, they said, never, ever do this again. “We would have had to refer you for investigation under the new Named Person laws,” they warned me, carefully.

The idea I might now “face investigation” or scrutiny over a safe dose of cough syrup? It horrifies me. Parents must be made aware of what the Named Person policy means. It means state surveillance of us as parents.

We must vote against the SNP’s attack on parenthood now, and again in 2016. I would urge parents to vote tactically, to diminish the SNP’s influence, to fight their attack to parenthood.

Parents, not the state, are best placed to bring up their children.

C Sharwood-Smith

Kirk Yetholm

Borders