How long is a piece of string?
More importantly, how long are those apron strings that you should keep the kids attached to during the summer holidays?
I had an unusually liberating experience recently. I sent my kids off on a nature trail – and out of sight for ten minutes – at an open day at a local attraction.
Normally this might set palpitations in motion, as they are only six and four. There were lots of strangers about, hundreds in fact.
And yet this time it felt right. It was on home ground, a venue they were comfortable with. No chance of them wandering off into the street. Just a circular trail within the confines of a big, noisy, friendly and busy family open day.
What WAS I thinking of? A walk alone to the end of our (long) street wouldn't normally be on the cards. But then that's a through route with lots of naughty drivers ready to draw up alongside and pounce. But only maybe.
So what are we really protecting them against?
When I was a lad we lived at the coast, and we were allowed out on our bikes for half a day at a time and our parents would expect us home when we got there, often late in the day, hungry and grubby. We could only have been nine or ten, but if a ten-year-old was left to fend for themselves for half a day with an eight-year-old sibling they would no doubt be castigated by the so-called liberal press for child neglect.
While aged 11, we were invited up into the quiet signal box at our remote village level crossing. Perhaps there was a greater trust of strangers in those days. He'd let us put coins on the line and then rush back to see how they'd been flattened after the excursion had rattled by. Today he would most probably be prosecuted.
What has changed in the intervening 30-odd years?
Even now, as parents ourselves, we take risks with the children. Who hasn't, for instance, left a sleeping baby in a locked car so as not to disturb them? After all, they're only outside the house, so what could go wrong?
You've got the pair of them in the bath, only three or four inches of water. The phone rings, you nip out to answer it.
But this is safety at home rather than an issue of freedom. Is the risk of letting them explore, perhaps fall on the rocks at the beach, or perhaps get stuck up a tree, the same kind of risk?
Is it more about letting them find themselves in the real world? Have an adventure? Are we guilty of being sucked into a 24-hour rolling news agenda of tragedy, disaster, child neglect and paedophilia?
So back to my original question. The answer, of course, is "How long is a piece of string?"
