What I can’t see, I can’t over-parent

Parenting holiday lessons... channelling my Kirsty Allsopp

Kirstie Allsopp - apparently the worst mother in Britain right now (for allowing her 15 year old to go interrailing), has come out swinging.  And good for her. I’m team-Allsopp.  As readers will know, I’ve long been convinced that giving kids independence as early as possible is the key to building resilience, responsibility and creativity.  Yes, there are risks - but, in my opinion (and increasing numbers of others’), many more to over-parenting and childhoods spent more online than off.  

Sharing secrets and memories

Having said that, it’s all been a little academic to my own parenting of 3 under 5s, 6. 7, 8… until now, with the eldest just short of 11.  Yes, we’ve embraced chores as early as we can, but living in a small, commuter rat-run village with few neighbourhood playmates, it’s been hard to practise the ‘free range parenting’ that Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy (his partner on the ‘Let Grow’ movement) advocate for. 

Recently, we’ve started letting the kids sleep out in a shed in the garden, to wander off on solo errands during trips to our small market town and take the puppy out by themselves but none of these allow for much mischief-making for three siblings whose boredom and/or irritation with each other I can hear from 100 yards away. 

Outside these small tendrils of freedom from our family bounds, I’m struggling to find many other parents willing to loosen the reins to the big-wide-world with me.  Instead there are nervous texts in whatsapp checking whether a child will know anyone at an upcoming summer camp; fretful concerns over first sleepovers away from home; chaperones for hang-outs and packed-agenda playdates full of allergy-warnings and online waivers.  

Holidays provide the perfect opportunity.  A change of scene and routine to create more colourful memories - sunny, wet, sandy, dirty, exhausting memories.  And the Netherlands, it turns out, is the perfect place to practise free-range parenting. 

I write this (very briefly) from a holiday there with three other families and it’s the most perfect trip I could ever have imagined for one at our stage. We’re all camped separately within a huge site of static mobile-homes, safari tents and open-camping fields that wrap around a cheesy water park and a refreshingly relaxed theme park. It’s without a doubt, the last kind of holiday the well-travelled, young professional me would ever have thought I would enjoy.  Staffing is minimal and unobtrusive.  Gates and doors are left open.  Bikes piled up in corners, unlocked.  Queues are almost non-existent and there’s not a health and safety Nazi to be found (unlike in the UK). It’s all so refreshing and our eight cumulative kids, aged 6-12 are living their best free-range lives, disappearing for hours on end until their stomachs send them back to raid one of our various fridges. 

There have been endless hours burying each other in sand, on table-tennis tables, noisy games of Uno, beach volleyball (to a blaring Top Gun soundtrack), an impromptu gymnastic display cheered on by strangers; bike races weaving through chilled-out pedestrians and a competition to see who can ride the biggest roller coaster the most times (my 9 year old victorious on 22).

There’s also been a twisted ankle, some nasty scrapes and bruises, a lot of exposure to swear words and apparently the offer of a cigarette from a 14 year old loitering around the sandpit plus a few ramifications from slagging off Dutch football players (that we know about).  But when our paths cross (whilst the adults channel their inner-kid, running fully clothed through play fountains, beer in hand), the kids are filthy, dripping wet and hungry, but their shining eyes hold stories they’ll share excitedly, and secrets they won’t.  

And… I’ve realised, I don’t want their secrets.  They’re their bonds of friendship. My new mantra… ‘What I can’t see, I can’t over-parent’.  

No one has asked for a device since we got here.