Ivor Baddiel asks: Are you setting your child up to fail?

The story takes off from here — Marsham discovers that someone is cheating, so has to try to uncover them while maintaining his own deception. But aside from that, one of the reasons I wrote the story is that, to an extent, Marsham’s story is my story.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not for one minute suggesting I’m very clever, (that mantle has been taken up by another member of my family). I’m talking about living up to my potential.

When I first read How Children Fail I found myself weeping, internally, but weeping nonetheless. It really struck a chord; that was me, I had done that. I had not only not lived up to my potential, but I was scared of doing well, scared of succeeding. But why?

Writing this book, a memory came back to me.

I was about seven, at North West London Jewish Day School (or New Women’s Lavatory Just Down Stairs, as someone christened it, though perhaps christened is the wrong word). I remember sitting in the assembly hall as our teacher told us about a play we were doing. It required an American, so he asked if anyone would like to play that part.

My hand shot up. I had been born in America. I was perfect for the role.

The teacher got me up in front of the class and said: “So go on then, be American.”

I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to be American. I can’t remember what I actually did, but I can remember the feelings standing there in front of my class — humiliation, fear, embarrassment. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part.

Now I’m not saying that that one small incident is entirely responsible for my subsequent non-achievement, we’ll come on to the other reasons shortly, but there’s something about my time at North West that has always bothered me.

I didn’t fail. I did well, I was always near the top of the class (I know because in those days we were given positions), I was always in the top three in fact. But I was never first. Never number one. That was either Sara Jane Glass or David Freedman. And yes, it could have been, and probably was, because they were, and no doubt, still are cleverer than me. But, but, but, but… there is a part of me that thinks, and to be honest, kind of knows, that it is because I didn’t want to be number one. I didn’t want the limelight, the glory, the nachus.

Of course, that wasn’t just it. My weird Jewish household was full of confusing contradictions. I went to North West, a religious Jewish school, but sometimes for breakfast I’d be given bacon. (I’ll just give you a minute to recover from that). My mother told me I could do anything I wanted as long as it made me happy, but my father was a different story.

He sadly passed away this year and I don’t want to go into the complexities of my brothers’ and my relationship with him; I couldn’t do it justice here (it’s taken many, many years of therapy) and that wouldn’t be fair, but the truth is, I wanted to succeed for him and I couldn’t.

My father was a very clever man. He was a scientist, a doctor of chemistry, but life took over his dreams and he never got the Nobel prize (I’m exaggerating, though who knows, he might have got it, 20 per cent of Nobel prize winners are Jewish). So of course, he wanted his children to do so in his stead. And I tried, I really tried. I took chemistry, physics and maths at A-level even though I had no real aptitude for those subjects as my results proved. (D, E, D). When I told him I wanted to study psychology he hit the roof. In his opinion social science was nonsense. (Similarly, when David told him he wanted to study English, he said that was a waste of a brain).

Even if I had become a great scientist, I don’t think it would have made either of us happy — I wouldn’t have done it for myself and he would, most probably, have resented it because of the success he didn’t have.

Hopefully I’m saying here, and in my book, it’s tough to achieve your potential, be who you really are, be successful — whatever success might mean to you. But (and this won’t come as a great surprise), in the book, Marsham does it and, even though at times it’s been a bumpy ride, I feel I’m getting there.

As parents of course we want our children to succeed, and maybe, as Jewish parents we can be a little pushy at times, but I think by being aware that success can be difficult for them, for all sorts of reasons, we can help them achieve their true potential. Basically, flap nisht, they’ll get there eventually.

Britain’s Smartest Kid…On Ice! by Ivor Baddiel is published by Scholastic