‘Your mother is so proud of you.’

   I stared at the speaker, a friend of my parents, in disbelief. I was just about to graduate at a time when degrees were quite rare and there were only four universities in Scotland. I was quite proud of myself but the idea that this satisfied glow extended to my mother was ridiculous. The friend insisted: my mother had apparently been blowing my trumpet since I was five. To others, perhaps, but never to me.

   I grew up to the mantras: ‘go to the top of the class but don’t take your books, you’ll be back’ (any success is a mere flash in the pan) and ‘for a clever lassie, you’re remarkably stupid’ (brainy but useless). To this day, I remain plagued with a sense of never having done anything well or useful. What Mother would say about my present attempts to write fiction, I shudder to think!

   If you had asked me forty years ago what I would change about Scotland – indeed what my generation DID change - I would have said: we must not belittle our children’s efforts and achievements; we must praise and celebrate everything they do; we must give them – that modern holy grail - self-esteem. The mantras my three children grew up to were: ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’ and – echoing a catchphrase of that era - ‘didn’t you do well!’ Even when they clearly had not.

   Now, with the next generation, we see the long-term effects of the praise-everything culture. I happily expected these young people would be the culmination of the great change my generation had begun: full of self-esteem, fulfilling potential, unburdened by adult denigration.

   Shakespeare’s never wrong: there are seven ages of man; youth’s a stuff will not endure.

   Yes, the old culture of denigration needed changing, but I have a sneaking feeling that we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.