Life

Leona O'Neill: Kirstie Allsopp hasn't done herself any favours with iPadgate

Every mum and dad knows that parenting can be a tough gig but is destroying your children's tablet computers a good way to deal with infractions of family rules regarding their use? I think not, writes Leona O'Neill

TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp's iPadgate – talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut...
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp's iPadgate – talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut... TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp's iPadgate – talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut...

THE thing about being a well paid, well known celebrity is that anything you say and do – stupid or otherwise – can be plastered all over newspapers. Look at house-flipping, doily making, vintage clothes wearing toff Kirstie Allsopp. She can’t even say that she smashed her children’s iPads because they didn’t do what she said without people criticising her.

Last week Kirstie, who is a mother to two sons, aged 12 and 10 years, and two stepsons, said she smashed the electronic devices because her boys broke her rules on playing games outside restricted online time.

She said she didn’t smash them in a violent way, just smashed them on a table leg to teach them a lesson.

Speaking to Channel 5's Jeremy Vine she said: "This is the first time I've said this publicly. In June I smashed my kids' iPads, not in a violent way. I actually banged them on the table leg.

"There is a game called Fortnite and another, PUBG, and we had made all sorts of rules and all sorts of times when we said you can't play them and all those rules got broken and in the end I said: 'Right that is it, I have to physically [break them]."

Now I’m all for house rules and teaching kids boundaries with regards screen time, but I think Kirstie has done herself no favours here at all.

Many of her critics are focusing on the cost of the iPads, and the expensive lesson her children learned. She answered them by tweeting: “The second hand value of the iPads is about £70 each, if I feel a lesson was learned about following through then it is worth far, far far more to our family than £140. This is about the value of trust, and the value of people over things.”

Not to go all thought police on Kirstie, but I think the lesson learned will be far more expensive.

It’s not easy parenting kids. They can try your patience like no-one else and it is far easier to lose your temper than to think logically and strategically when they are melting your brain.

I’m sure she is aware this wasn’t her finest hour. In whacking the iPads off the table leg to smash them she taught her children that it’s fine to lash out violently when things don’t go your way. She taught them that it’s fine to break other people’s precious things – because we all know how precious iPads and phones are to our kids – in order to teach them a lesson.

Why didn’t she just lock them in a cupboard until they behaved? The iPads, not the children.

We all lose our heads from time to time with our kids; it’s the normal run of things. But smashing up their stuff is a extreme and totally wrong. The backlash from iPad-gate was so extreme that Kirstie has deactivated her Twitter account until, presumably, things calm down and people stop losing their heads.

It’s not the first time Kirstie has raised eyebrows by voicing her, at times, unconventional opinions.

At the start of the month she said her boys were banned from owning smartphones and did not have access to ‘damaging’ social media. She revealed that she had a strict rule of no internet-connected devices in the bedrooms because "kids tend not to look at porn or beheading videos in the kitchen".

Last year she caused a storm by admitting that her sons fly in economy when travelling, while she and her husband fly business class. She said having her sons in premium seats seemed "an absurd waste of money" and "very spoiling".

She also spoke about giving her children freedom with “wood, knives and matches sometimes and nails, screws and drills, sometimes", saying, "they rarely – touch wood – do themselves any harm and they learn so much”.

I don’t know what her thinking is on this, but it’s far from drills that my children will continue to be raised.

As far as the iPad smashing goes, I think Kirstie should leave the toddler tantrums to the kids. She should try saying no and meaning it, instead of resorting to hulk-esque parenting tactics. It works, and is less expensive than replacing technology.