It’s an all too familiar scene, young children sitting with their parents in a coffee shop sipping on an adult sized drink, rather than playing in the park or engaged in an age appropriate activity, so when and why did treating children as adults become normal?

It doesn’t help that in today’s Daily Mail online (23 Feb), four-year-old Suri Cruise is pictured in a branch of Starbucks in Vancouver carrying her frothy drink, accompanied by her nanny and bodyguard. Of course this is nothing out of the ordinary for the little girl who, if reports are to be believed, designs her own clothes and chooses what time to go to bed, and she hasn’t even started school yet

It begs the question- are we letting children grow up too fast? We now have a generation of ‘tweens’ who beg their parents to buy them expensive make-up, clothes and take them to salons for facials, massages and manicures. Then there are the high heels for tots, encouraging very young children to don adult footwear. What happened to letting children be children and leaving them to play with their toys and make new discoveries?