Thirty-seven hours (not) at home with the agony family Atkins

A 12-year-old girl disappears from home. Her mother is `The Daily Telegraph' agony aunt, Christian, moralising. What, asks Virginia Ironside, can one say?

A 12-year-old girl leaves home for 37 hours. She must be one of thousands who leave home every year who merit no attention at all. But this 12-year-old girl attracts the national press, and results in the deployment of four policemen, one of whom actually stays the night at her parents' home, tracker dogs sweeping the area, and helicopters scanning the local river.

What prompts this overreaction? After all, if the daughter of a black family in Hackney were to go missing, the police would almost certainly suggest her parents wait a week before galvanising themselves into action. The reason for all this brouhaha about this particular girl is the fact that she is the daughter of Anne Atkins, witty and acerbic agony aunt on The Daily Telegraph, Christian moralist, broadcaster, a woman of firm views about bringing up children, and a woman who has leapt to media fame in only a year because of her controversial views.

For us observers there is an element of schadenfreude. A spot of tee- heeing in the background, of the kind that we all felt when Victoria Gillick's daughter had an illegitimate child at 18. Murmurings about the cobbler's children being the worst shod. After all, who is this woman who dares dish out advice on abortion (wicked), homosexuals (she caused a storm by broadcasting her views that the Church should shun homosexuality on Radio 4's Thought for the Day) and discipline (she believes in smacking children between two and six and after that, "painful but harmless deterrents," if there can be such things) divorce and sex before marriage (wrong) when clearly her own family is in one hell of a mess?

A happy child does not leave home for 37 hours, after all, with only a brief note saying she was going for a walk. A happy child does not cause her parents to worry themselves sick, unless she is deeply in need of love and attention. Anne Atkins has always deplored parents who treat their children as "the last Emperor" by ferrying them around all day, and her children were known to members of the congregation as the "free- range" children, but have her much-vaunted views on giving children as much independence as possible in fact been a form of neglect? And surely her views on giving children independence has sat uncomfortably with the family rule that no television can be watched until after dark and then under parental supervision?

Atkins herself has admitted that her daughter, Lara, is "not tough, not streetwise. She is quite naive compared to other London girls of her own age." It seems she enjoys reading Molesworth and Jennings books, hardly the fare for a Nineties girl, and has always been something of a tomboy, resisting her entrance into St Paul's School for Girls, though she has now settled down. She went to bed at 9pm on Saturday night, an oddly early time for a 12-year-old girl in London, and it was Ben, nine, who shared a bedroom with her, who raised the alarm when she was found to be missing. And that's odd in itself. A 12-year-old girl should surely have her own bedroom if at all possible, or at least share one with her sister.

Anne Atkins is married to a pounds 12,000 a year vicar in Fulham. She has four children, Serena, 14, Alexander, 12 and nine-year-old Ben. The family has not been without its problems. Her husband suffered from ME for six months; one of the boys has special educational needs; one became so upset with bullying at school that his mother became ill. Twice, despite the fact that Atkins' husband is a trained counsellor, they have resorted to seeing psychologists, one being helpful and the other, apparently, nearly putting the family on the "at risk" register.

Most media people regard Atkins as a slightly barmy, but thoroughly welcome addition to the scene, with her crackers, illiberal, right-wing, religious views. She is a personally nice woman, highly articulate, and often nuggets of good sense pop through the cant.

Her columns are littered with entertainingly flip letters. For instance "I have a problem with a dust-buster vacuum cleaner. I used it to suck up some Parmesan cheese spilt by my toddler on Tristan and now it has very bad breath. As a Christian, what would you do?" (Answer: "As a Christian, I would advise kindness, compassion and common sense. Before you use it again, sprinkle the carpet with Listerine.") She's a marvellous and very English mixture of mad moralist and comedienne.

But it's hard to know whether this latest episode in her troubled life will add to her readers' sympathy for her, or make them view her advice with more scepticism than usual. An agony aunt who has never seen a spot of emotional trouble in her life is useless; she cannot empathise with her readers' problems. An agony aunt who has been through the mill and come out the other side is more welcome, being seen as someone who has successfully overcome her own problems and is in a good position to guide others through their emotional minefields.

But an agony aunt who experiences problems while dishing out advice - that's another matter. Claire Rayner had a problem with her son using cannabis at school, but that was a common or garden problem. There but for the grace of God go all of us, we might easily say. But an agony aunt whose daughter actually disappears voluntarily, causing havoc at home? Isn't that something else? It wasn't the first time the child has tried to draw desperate attention to herself after all. She once disappeared for four hours when she was eight, and was found standing stock-still behind a curtain. This is not normal childish behaviour. It's the behaviour of a child who's very unhappy, who doesn't know instinctively that she will ever be desperately missed if she's off the scene, a child who has to put her parents love to the test and not one who can take it for granted.

My advice to Anne would be to give the child a room of her own, allow her out on Saturday nights, start ferrying her about by car - it's a loving indulgence - allow her to watch telly whenever she wants, cut out the painful deterrents and tell her, and show her, she loves her, day and night. But in the meantime, for Atkins to keep on giving the rest of us the entertaining and moralistic views for which she has become so well- known.