When I was a kid, there was a hotel that backed on to the field where we used to play football. One day, we picked a load of apples and hurled them over that wall, raining Bramleys on anybody foolish enough to be enjoying an afternoon tea. After doing this for some time (we had collected a ton of apples), we were forced to hide in the bushes when a police car arrived. There was then a police chase, before we were returned to our parents in shame.
The point of this story is not to convince you that I am in fact Billy Bunter, but to illustrate the point that there is no way my kids are ever going to be able to do that, because my wife and I are too terrified to let them out of our sight. When I got home after the apple incident, my mum gave me a bollocking and told me not to do anything like that when I went out the next day. And by “went out”, I mean leaving at 9am and returning at 6pm after a full working day of being a prick around the neighbourhood.
Just recently, I took the boys to the park and our eldest said he wanted to pop over to the area designed for older kids. “No problem,” I said. I then watched the younger two while internally freaking out that I couldn’t see the eldest. As I pushed the boys on the swings, I prayed that I would one day see our boy again. When he returned a short while later, it was as much as I could do not to run up and hug him like the end of a kidnap movie.
To give this some context, I am not as mentally sound as the average person, and so it’s likely my paranoia is amplified. But I think everyone finds it far more difficult to let children go off and play today. At a time when all the best Netflix series are about people abducting children, your fears tend to become slightly irrational.
I realise this is not a new phenomenon, but what does feel new is that those kids who are trusted to be out and about unsupervised are the subject of scandal in the area where I live. There are posts on a Facebook forum about “the group of teenagers who stare at you when you go into the Co-op”, and how appalling their parents must be.
I am reminded of the bit in Finding Nemo when the baby turtle slips out of the current and his dad trusts him to find his way back, providing Nemo’s dad with a valuable lesson in parenting. Unfortunately, all this makes me think is that, 1) our own baby turtles don’t look properly when they are crossing the road and 2) if I am taking my parenting tips from a Pixar movie then my family really is in trouble.
Personally, I am not sure what to do about it. I want our kids to play independently without us cramping their style; but those kids I do see out tend to be kicking a bus stop or torturing a cat. (I may be exaggerating.) One answer could be that I dress like a kid and pretend to be a bearded 11-year-old, so I can keep an eye on things. Think of it as a premise for an 80s sitcom, one I would call “See You At School, Dad!”
My wife and I have talked, and decided we need to let our kids off the leash a bit. Because I have a dream – and that dream is a son being brought home by the police for throwing hard fruit at a group of innocent hotel guests.
