How to teach an 11-year old about the financial markets

The 11-year old, now at secondary school, has a different half-term from his siblings.

This is immensely annoying for his parents – though he quite enjoys staying up late during the week, while his younger brothers and sister are sent to bed.

One evening, I am home alone; his mother is chairing an emergency general meeting of the Parents Association (they appear to spend longer in meetings than most Parliamentary select committees). I am clearly a soft touch, as I not only let him watch the Apprentice with me, but when he says he is peckish, I curate a toasted cheese sandwich. I think he was angling for an apple.

But his ploy soon backfires. A quick discussion about how the muppets on the Apprentice don't understand profit margins morphs into a tutorial about calculating bond yields.

I am not entirely sure how this happened. But Niall Ferguson is partly to blame; I am currently reading his 'Ascent of Money'. I can recommend it. Everything from the Medicis to Long Term Capital Management is in there.

So, at 10.10pm – way past the 11-year old's normal bedtime – I am explaining the equation that causes interest rates to shoot up inversely proportional to the price of the bond's face value. Gripping stuff.

But the 11-year old has already grasped one of life's great lessons. The longer you can allow an adult to bore on about one of their hobby horses, the longer you can delay going to bed.

The late bedtimes and lessons in the fixed-income markets are not the only silver-lining to a separate half term.

We have decided to pack him up to Cumbria 24 hours ahead of the rest of us school-and-office toilers in order to see his cousins and grandparents. This involves sending him on the train on his own. In theory, this is a long journey to do solo. It totals 280 miles and requires us to put our faith in Virgin Trains, something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But the wonders of a mobile phone mean that I can be fairly confident that if anything goes wrong, he will only be a phone call away. And he has spent the last few weeks negotiating a daily commute across London to school, something he has taken to like a meerkat tackling a scorpion – with surprising enthusiasm.

But after seeing him into his seat at Euston, I happen to walk past the train guard. I tell the guard that our precious first born is in coach D, "It's not that he needs looking after. But I thought I'd just tell you, in case you break down or anything."

At this point the guard looks deeply suspicious and asks, "How old is he?"

I panic. Is there an age limit on children travelling alone? It suddenly dawns on me that there probably is.

"He's 12," I lie. "He's very grown up. He'll be fine."

The guard softens a little and then she says: "Don't worry. I'll move him into first class to make sure I can keep an eye on him."

For the next three hours I receive texts from the 11-year-old cuckoo in his comfy first class nest, giving me updates about all the free food and drink he is being plied with.

On the journey back to London – travelling with all of his family in crowded standard class – he declares: "I always get travel sick ... unless I am in first class."

Nice try, sonny.

Dad of Four is a weekly column by feature writer Harry Wallop for Telegraph Men. To read more from the series, try one of the below:

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