Talking to kids about politics

I think it started when I was watching one of those click-bait videos on Facebook. It was Ed Miliband edited against a soppy love song, looking adoringly into camera. The kind of thing the Labour PR machine could probably do without at the moment. Or it might have been when the polling cards arrived through the post. Or the news… we’ve been watching a lot of that lately. Whatever it was that sparked the interest, my four year old has twigged that something pretty important is happening soon, and it’s all to do with “tics”.

As a kid, I can remember my parents talking about politics loads. “Bloody Tories” and “Bloody Tony Blair” were oft- heard phrases in my house. I’d hear my parents debating left versus right with other family members, and I’d inevitably get interested. Over the years I picked my own path to discover my own political views. Inevitably they’ve ended up being pretty close to my own parents’. I’m a “Guardian-reading lefty” through and through.

Anyway, I’ve found it really interesting to see how Frog takes on the whole notion of politics – and the fact that there are people who make these huge decisions about how to run the country. Rapidly approaching five years old, she’s at the age where she’s asking big questions that constantly keep me on my toes (“What happens when we die Mummy?” etc). But she has some ideas of her own about how things work. So we filmed a little vlog to talk about it.

Here it is – The Frog Vlog episode 1: Frog’s take on politics (she covers penal reform, education, the NHS, transport and what Ed Miliband will do when he sees her picking her nose)…