Is it outrageous to take a seven-year-old to the spa?

Eyeing the bold contrast between my brown eyebrows and blonde fringe, a seven-year-old brunette recently raised an eyebrow of her own and announced: “I do not approve of women who dye their hair.”

Call me in 30 years, my young friend.

We all have preconceptions of things that are Not Quite Right. I, for example, have always felt uneasy about beauty treatments for children. Surely there’s no clearer instance of attempting to “gild refined gold, to paint the lily”. But as this paper’s family travel editor, I’ve received a steady stream of information about spa breaks for kids since around the middle of last year. Not adult spas with on-site creches, but actual spa treatments for young children. Judging by volume of emails, this is the fastest growing trend in family travel for 2018.

I discovered that at the Corinthia Hotel in Lisbon, for example, children from ages 4-12 can get a “Doll’s Face Facial” for €45 (perhaps it sounds more appealing in Portuguese). Higher rollers there may pony up €190 for the Mummy-and-me or Daddy-and-me, which includes: 1 bubble bath, 2 back massages, and 2 mini facials (sounds relaxing).

Over in Venice, at the Marriott, children aged 12 and over can endure a “Donald Duck foot massage” (Disney being bigger even than Twilight for the over-12s).

What has driven the rise in treatments for children at spas?

Money, obviously. But why this particular trend? While these offerings sounded largely unappealing, I was still intrigued. As Rosie Green observed, quite sensibly, earlier this year, treatments for children at spas throw up ethical and physiological questions. Isn’t beautifying kids adjacent to child beauty pageants? Aren’t their bones and muscles a bit underdeveloped for adult-style massage?

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According to beauty therapists I spoke to in London, France and Switzerland, it’s largely the American and Russian markets that have driven interest in spa treatments for kids. And it’s true that, in recent years when I get a pedicure in New York, more often than not I’ll see a girl - or boy - aged four and up, getting one beside me.

But there’s another side to spas

Sure, some people go for fasting or cosmetic surgery these days but, in their most old-fashioned form, they’re places for being well, for checking out of the grind of normal life and taking air and food that it decidedly healthier than what you or I - or our children - encounter on a daily basis. The very best of these traditional spas that I’ve encountered are found in Switzerland or Austria, where there’s a very particular gemütlichkeit, a sense of a happy group dedication to wellness that I do think is of universal benefit. So when I saw that my favourite wellness centre, the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, had built an entire children’s spa, I decided to investigate.

And this is why I recently found myself halfway up a mountain in eastern Switzerland with my seven-year-old daughter, Antonia, contemplating the healing power of the 36.5C (body temperature) water thundering out of a crevice in the rocks.

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People have been taking the waters up this mountain in the town of Bad Ragaz for more than 800 years. For centuries monks ran the show, making money and, allegedly, healing various ailments by lowering sick people in flimsy-looking hammocks into the steaming waters and, later, in cell-like rooms in a glorious baroque building near the water’s source.

Today, it’s a more elegant affair: a few miles down at the base of the mountain are three hotels - ranging from a modern tower to more traditional buildings and one Swiss-style boutique property - which share access to an impressive and vast spa, the newest element of which is a children’s pool and treatment menu. The Grand Resort Bad Ragaz has always welcomed kids, offering a fun kindergarten and healthy but tasty children’s menu in each of its seven restaurants, but this year for the first time it has a range of spa activities for kids.

The new pool complex for children has separate areas for babies and older swimmers, and while it is windowless, Antonia loved the Swiss cottage theme - the room is lined in alpine houses, as if you’re in some fantasy Heidiland (the real one is just a 20-minute drive away), complete with shutters and red gingham curtains. Fake rocks divide the small children’s ankle-deep play pool - with water wheels, small slide, pump and fountains - from a larger pool, 1.1-1.3m, for bigger kids that features a fountain and is universally accessible thanks to a range of floats and arm bands.

This complex, hidden just behind the adult spa, hosts evening pool parties, underwater games, swimming lessons and aqua dance classes not dissimilar to the ones led in one of the adult pools around the corner. It is run strictly, as the adult spa is: children do not enter alone, classes are rigorous and fun, health and wellbeing are top of the agenda.

After we’d splashed about in the pool for a bit, it was time to investigate the children’s treatments. While Antonia had never before asked to have her nails varnished, she was entertained by the glamour of sitting in a pretty room at the adult spa, looking out over the manicured gardens of the resort. I, in turn, was thrilled to recognise Sabine, a German aesthetician I remembered from an excellent pedicure two years earlier (Bad Ragaz is a place with a regular following; a friend’s father went for a fortnight annually for years, and I recognised two people at breakfast from a previous visit; the resort has a similarly loyal staff). Sabine talked Antonia through the manicure and helped her choose flower decals to add to the varnish they chose together. “Classic,” my daughter pronounced her neon masterpiece.

But where do you draw the line?

My daughter was game to try anything, intrigued to discover why adults are so gung-ho about spas. But, for her, the line came right around the time she learnt about disposable pants. “What?” she hooted, a foghorn of mirth in a treatment room lined with a pastel mural of the Grand Canyon.

The 45-minute massage, conducted while she wore said pants, was, she announced “weird on my body; tickly good, not bad, but not really something for children.”

Because I accompanied her, it was a chatty event and the friendly and professional masseuse, Barbara, who I saw again for my own “energising massage and metabolism corrector”, offered a flawless treatment. But it was, my daughter said, an odd way to spend her time. There was, she observed, too much oil. “When I want to relax,” she deadpanned, “I sleep.”

Massage does seem an oddly still activity for an active child. It’s sort of like dogs in clothes: a product unsuited to its free spirited target audience.

swimming pool safety campaign

Far better was exploring the outdoor waterfalls of the on-site municipal pool, hiking around the gorge, and attempting the outrageously entertaining mermaid swimming lesson.

How does a mermaid swim? With lots of awkward hip thrusts that evoke a breakdance worm, while wearing a tail costume that binds ones legs and ends in a fairly effective fin. If this seemed silly to me, my seven-year-old took it with the utmost seriousness. It was, after all, hardly as absurd as donning a disposable thong. Plus, the excellent swimming instructor, Ramona, who led us another morning in an popular parent-child complimentary water aerobics class, kept spirits up with her inexhaustible enthusiasm.

Fresh from the mermaid swim, we went cycling with the hotel’s bikes around the town of Bad Ragaz, along a tributary of the Rhine, weaving between sculptures: each year this small municipality (pop: 5,874) hosts the world’s biggest outdoor sculpture exhibition.

Holidays with kids are so often a balance of give and take - alternating child-focused activities with “adult time” in which you scramble to offload the children. But Antonia and I found balance in our weekend away together. Bad Ragaz is emphatically not a kinderhotel - it is a sophisticated environment, with excellent food and accommodation, in which my daughter enjoyed upping her game.

Bad Ragaz is getting it right - for the most part - relying on centuries of precedent, and creating a serene environment for relaxation and good health, and I hope that other spas will follow suit, putting the emphasis on wellness, together, rather than beautifying young people. Family spa holidays are a fantastic idea - but making children into mini-adults is not.

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Essentials

A stay for a parent and child at Grand Resort Bad Ragaz starts from ￡380 per night in low season, including breakfast and access to the adult and children's spas and bicycles to cycle around the municipality. Bling Bling nails costs ￡65; children's massages cost from ￡91. Adult energy booster massage costs from ￡126. A horse-drawn carriage tour of the original water source with an expert guide costs from ￡256.