How posh is your child's bedroom? Take our Tatler-inspired test and find out
Strewn with detritus, or spic and span with a rocking horse in one corner?
If you’re posh, your child’s bedroom will feature the latter - gently rocking to a fro, next to a doll's house (an heirloom, naturally) and collection of classic children's hardback books, with illustrations.
The rest of us can only dream that a latter-day Mary Poppins will drop by and spruce things up with a click of her fingers. Be gone, Peppa Pig! Be gone, bright pink dummies! Be gone, half-drunk bottles of milk slowly turning sour beneath the cot!
Such are the signs that your nursery is Not Posh. But what are the other hallmarks of an upper class child’s bedroom? Helpfully, Tatler have produced a guide, under the heading What Posh People Keep In Their Nurseries.
The answers are sometimes surprising - so take our quiz to find out how posh your nursery is...
1. The Doll’s House
Everyone loves a doll’s house, but as a parent it can be hard not to arrange the contents as you see fit, which is never the same as how your child sees fit. (“The bed can’t go in the bathroom, darling, don’t be silly! The dolls wouldn’t like that at all.”)
But the type of doll’s house you have is key to determining where on you sit on the social spectrum. If it’s a Barbie Rainbow Castle you get five posh points. The Country Mansion Table Top Doll House from Toys R Us wins you 10 points - terribly aspirational.
If your child has a scaled-down (but still quite large) Georgian townhouse in their bedroom, which has been passed down through the generations of your family and is stuffed full of miniature antique furniture, award yourself 15 posh points.
2. The toys
Your child's bedroom may look as though a tornado has been through it (bonus point if they have a playroom), but take a look around at their toys.
If he or she possesses the entire contents of the kids’ section of the Argos catalogue, give yourself five points. Ten, if it’s a mish-mash of Early Learning Centre - solidly middle-class and shows you value education. But if your child’s room is crammed with Sylvanian Families, you win 15 points.
These furry little woodland creatures, for which every woman in her 30s feels wildly nostalgic, over-populate the posh nursery according to Tatler. We imagine you can barely move in the Kensington Palace nursery for them.
3. The books
We all know it’s important to start reading books to children as soon as they’ve been conceived, and that if you’re not reading them Proust (in the original French) by their first birthday they’re headed for a lifetime of academic failure.
But the book collection found in a posh nursery is very different from that found in the average one. If your child mainly owns books that have been spun off from TV shows, only five points for you. If they have the complete works of Julia Donaldson, 10 points.
If, however, the books are old, and the kind of thing your grandparents might have read in their infancy - Just William, Treasure Island, Little Grey Rabbit and so on - you’ve earned 15 points. If the volumes themselves are as old as your grandparents and are held together with jaundiced Sellotape, give yourself an extra five points and a big posh pat on the back.
4. The pets
Every parent dreads the moment their child turns to them and demands a pet. What's the smallest thing we can get away with? What will die the soonest and leave us free to go on holiday without making a whole host of complicated arrangements for its sustenance?
A hamster sounds fairly low-maintenance and your child will take great delight in installing a load of plastic wheels, slides and roller coasters in its cage. Award yourself five points if there’s a hamster in your child’s room. If you’re weak-willed, you’ll have given in when they requested a cat. Cats more or less manage their own affairs though, don’t they? Very independent animals. Have 10 points if there’s one curled up on your child’s Ikea armchair.
You know you’re extremely posh, however, if your child’s pet is a woodlouse. I don't know why either, but according to Tatler the well-bred infant will keep them in matchboxes in their bedroom. Fifteen points are yours if you’ve come up with this ingenious solution to the pet question.
5. The dressing up box
Best to have a few items handy for the inevitable fancy dress parties, not to mention World Book Day in March. And isn’t dressing up supposed to be good for their imaginations?
But only five points for you if your child’s dressing up box contains little more than last year’s Halloween mask, a Christmas stocking and an old plastic tiara. Make it 10 points if you’ve shelled out for a proper fireman, police officer or superhero costume.
If the box is filled with your old clothes, this will earn you the full 15 points. Tatler mentions a checked shirt bought from somewhere in the Cotswolds, a single stiletto and some old (but quite expensive) costume jewellery. The posh make it look so easy, don’t they?
Results
0-25 points: Must try harder. Bear in mind that the solution to your every problem does not lie on the high street. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but reading aboutThe Octonauts is not the same as a science book.
26-50 points: Your child’s bedroom is solidly middle class. Nothing wrong with that, sure, but it’s worth remembering you could spend less money and achieve better results. The posh do that shabby-chic thing so well.
51-80 points: Jolly good show, your child’s bedroom has attained Tatler levels of posh. Now go and free poor little Wilfred the woodlouse, he can’t breath in that box, for pity’s sake.
