General Election – I hope it means more to my kids than a bonus day off school

“So who are you going to vote for, Mummy?” Boy Two asked me today while he was ironing tea towels. (Yes really).

“Er. Well. I don’t actually know yet,” Oh yes. I’m one of the infamous floating voters.

“But you said you knew everything. Why don’t you know this?”

“Um. I did and mostly I do. At least about fact things, but this is different. And, in any case, even if I did I shouldn’t tell you because it’s a secret ballot.”

“Oh I remember. Will we be going back to that place with the little cubicles and the pencils on string?”

“That’s right.” And we embarked on a question-heavy conversation about the election during which I hope I’d got the message about how important politics is and how it matters to things in our lives – not just boring me talking a lot.

BBC presenter and former political editor Andrew Marr has worked on a book for children called Who’s In Charge? with publishers Dorling Kindersley. He said: It’s the duty of parents and schools to tell children about the importance of politics. After all, we are on the edge of a really exciting election.”

He has a couple of points about talking with children about politics:

• Don’t teach your children what to thing – it doesn’t help.
• It doesn’t matter if they disagree with you.
• Their passion is more important than their wisdom.
• Explain that it’s about deciding who sets the rules.

The BBC’s Newsround website has some very straightforward explanations about government and the election. It also has lots of clips of kids talking, very eloquently, about what they would do if they were Prime Minister. It certainly sparked a lot of conversation in our house. Although I’m not really sure how practical Lego cars and free popcorn dispensers are.

Our conversations turned to the frustration that they – clearly clever than adults – should wait until they were grown up before being allowed to vote. The good news is that they don’t – the children’s newspaper The First Post  has lots of info and a place where children can vote for the main parties.

The UK Parliament itself has a good resource tucked away in its education section. It’s a magazine called Voxpop that it says is aimed at first-time voters, but I found it explained things simply and gave me the answers I needed for the Boys.

There are also some remarkably unstuffy and fun games in the kids’ section. Play a race against time to clean the face of Big Ben before its 150th anniversary party.

I’m hoping that the inspiration for who to vote for will come to me in the next week or I might have to turn to my children for advice. As boy Two said: “Which one will give us longer holidays? You should vote for them.”