Café-Style Parenting

Molly Gunn - 19 Jun 14

That’s me, over there. I’m the one in the sunglasses, sitting at the table outside the café in the sunshine. A huge cup of coffee is nestling in my hand, while the cute 3-year-old next to me obscures his face with a giant Pain-au-Chocolate. Between us on the table sit a few cars from Cars, ready to commence in play once the pastry has been munched away. Meanwhile, the cute baby in the highchair is rubbing Croissant in his hair and tipping water on the pavement from his beaker. It’s relaxed, it’s happy, it’s contended…

It’s Café-Style Parenting.

Sound familiar?

If your toddler also knows how to say ‘Pain au Chocolate’ or if your baby is an expert in People Watching, and your local café owner knows not only what coffee you drink, but what colour straw your kid likes… then ladies, you too may be Café-Style Parents!

I don’t know about you, but while I may not love a soft play, I do love a café. And, prior to today I’ve considered my regular visits to various cafés a guilty pleasure. I’ve felt a little bit naughty every time I haven’t taken my son/s to a kid-focused group or play zone in favour of a walk to my favourite café to enjoy a casual, unfettered, hassle-free sit-and-do-nothing.

But, as I nestled that coffee this morning, and took in Rye’s early-morning blue-skied scenescape, while Rafferty rescued his ‘Finn McMissile’ car from the imaginary sea below our table – I thought: Café-Style Parenting ain’t all bad.

It’s actually PRETTY GOOD.

It’s good for us, and yes…. it’s good for them, too.

Café-Style Parenting (CPS) is a winner, because, for the grand total of £2.50, we can indulge in amicable calm time with our kids. We may all have a slightly-unhealthy elevenses, yes, but the rewards go beyond sustenance. Eg – Rafferty and I enjoy some mindless chit-chat, we comment on the world around us, or play with whatever toys we’ve brought with us. Fox gurgles away in his highchair and usually pulls in a stranger or two who feel compelled to give him a squidge. Often though, we just all sit and gaze about mindlessly, in companionable silence, thinking our own thoughts, absorbed in our own worlds and having a lovely time.

Only this morning, did I realise that actually… CSP was my ‘thing.’ And this thing I do with my sons, actually has benefits. So, us Café-Style Mothers need NOT FEEL GUILTY.

My kids know how to sit at a table without getting bored (for an hour, more than that can be pushing it). They know how to pass the time by saying nothing, or just chit-chatting (Fox gurgles). They know how to ‘just be’ without without being deliberately amused. They know how to interact in a – sometimes – grown up place. And, as well as that I like to think that it makes them worldly-wise, and a little bit cosmopolitan, too. (In my fantasy life, we’re in a café on the Riviera, not Rye High Street).

I”m sure I’m not the only one who chooses playgrounds, parks and outings on their proximity to a good café. If there isn’t one nearby, I’ll detour to one on the way – Rafferty thinks it perfectly normal to stop off at a café before we go to the swings (teaching him patience, bear with me on this!). I am a pro at spotting ample seating with perfect people-watching vantage point, and my son is an expert in the freshness of croissants (a future foodie?).

I’ve done CSP since first becoming a mother. My first foray into the outside-world with a baby-in-tow was the euphoric moment I persuaded by mother to let us leave the confines of the house as I convelesed post C-Section, post Pre-Eclampsia. She agreed we could go and sit in the Costa Coffee at the local Tesco Superstore (this glamorous location was chosen, because we could park right outside the door). With my teeny-tiny newborn pride-of-place in a car-seat on the table, as slightly-dull shoppers sat around me and over-indulged, I couldn’t have been happier.

Since then, CSP has featured heavily in the lives of me and my boy/s. I do CSP on a weekly, if not more, basis. I explored countless cafés around London where I used to live, and I’ve done the circuit in Rye where I now live. We go to local high-street cafés to posh cafés or hotel cafés. We do CSP in train stations, airports and museums. The joy is that simply buying a coffee and a pastry, the cost is never too high, whether at, say, the no-frills Bandstand café on Clapham Common or posh-as-you-like The Wolseley. We never go so far as to order juice or anything fancy, tap water will do quite nicely (with a straw, natch).

Sitting in a café with my sons makes me feel like the woman I am, and that my life doesn’t have to revolve around plastic-fantastic, primary-coloured, ‘kid-friendly’ hotspots. I enjoyed sitting in cafés and watching the world go by before I had children, and to be able to share this with them is truly special. Which is probably why I love it, so.

Well, that’s how I justify my coffee habit, anyway… 🙂

Read Molly’s other Selfish Mother posts, here!

Molly Gunn

Molly Gunn is the Curator of Goodness at Selfish Mother, a site she created for likeminded women in 2013. Molly has been a journalist for over 15 years, starting out on fashion desks at The Guardian, The Telegraph & ES Magazine before going freelance in 2006 to write for publications including Red, Stella, Grazia, Net-A-Porter and ELLE. She now edits Selfish Mother and creates #GoodTees which are sold via TheFMLYStore.com and John Lewis and have so far raised £650K for charity. Molly is mother to Rafferty, 5, Fox, 3 and baby Liberty. Molly is married to Tom, aka music producer Tee Mango and founder of Millionhands. They live, work and play in Somerset.

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