BY rights, our home should have been a seething mass of tangled nerves and anxiety this week, since two of the boys have been taking SATs tests at primary school.

One head teachers' spokesman described the Standard Assessment Tests, now being cut back by the Government, as "torture", when he demanded an end to "all those bed-wetting children stressed out by exams".

Polls of parents even claim a third of seven-year-olds, rising to two-thirds by age 11, are suffering from stress because of SATs. Stressed out seven and eleven-year-olds? I don't think so.

In our house, we did have sleepless nights, frayed tempers and fingernails bitten back to the bone. But that was just the parents. Neither of our boys seemed that bothered. The seven-year-old wasn't even sure he was doing the tests because they were slotted into his school day with the minimum of fuss. The 11-year-old was so laid back he was almost horizontal.

The only stress most children are aware of is that suffered by those teachers and parents reduced to nervous wrecks by the tests-and-targets treadmill. Teachers are overloaded with work and under pressure to get good results for their schools. Parents worry too much time is spent on testing rather than learning.

Most of us agree our system for assessing primary school children needs to be re-examined. But let's be honest about the reasons why. Putting the idea in youngsters' heads that sitting tests can make them ill is sidestepping the real argument. Our children are much smarter, and a lot more chilled out, than we give them credit for. Perhaps we could learn something from them.

SOME schools are now stopping traditional competitive sports days because they don't want children to be scarred by losing, which is daft. How will children ever find out what they are good at if they are not given the chance to shine and, by implication, fail? Why not ban the Christmas play too? After all, not everyone can sing, dance or act. Good schools recognise children have different strengths and weaknesses and help all their pupils to succeed where they can. They also teach them how to cope with failure - a valuable lesson for life.

BUT who can blame the Midlands school that's banning parents from sports day? I have been on the sidelines at enough school fixtures to see the sort of pushy, sports-mad loud-mouthed parent, who ruins it for everyone else. One dad recently ran onto the football pitch and nearly throttled a ten-year-old who had fouled his son. Where passions run high, I can understand teachers wanting to keep the grown-ups at home. Besides, it will spare some of us the embarrassment of coming in last in the parents' race.

THERE has been a big increase in the number of big blue trampolines appearing in gardens where we live. And I can't help thinking it's more than a coincidence that they're all blue. I'm sure it's subliminal. People are buying surrogate swimming pools. It may be cold and drizzly, but if you half-close your eyes and look out across the lawn, you could almost imagine you're back in that villa, with pool, in the Dordogne. We can all dream...