Free The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids by Tom Hodgkinson Page B

large groups as much as possible. Don’t coop them up in cars, in the nuclear household, in front of a screen. And in your own household, why separate them into individual bedrooms? We found that our children wanted to be together, like a pile of hamsters. So now they all sleep in the same room. First Arthur asked to be with Henry. And then daughter Delilah said she was lonely in her bedroom alone. So now, although they fight, I think they are happier.
    And that brings me to another point: adult friends. We like to sit drinking in the kitchen with our adult guests while the kids run wild around the house or in the garden, doing whatever they like doing.
    That was the great revelation that came after we moved to the country. Instead of shuffling the children off to bed and holding a stressful dinner party, we find that families locally get together for a late lunch at weekends. Piles of adults everywhere and piles of kids everywhere. And I, who had been missing my late-night drinking sessions, found a solution: start drinking earlier! By the time nine o’clock came round I was ready for bed. But I’d had a great time drinking beer all afternoon. With other adults. While the kids lookedafter themselves. This is the way of societies that are less industrialized than ours: people, people, everywhere! Conviviality and merriment, these are the keys.
    It’s also true to say that a little bit of booze weakens the authoritative dad. You become less strict: ‘Of course you can eat that huge pile of Haribo Tangfastics! Eat away! What do I care?’ It is astonishing what a relief it is to stop trying to be an authority figure and instead be a partner to your kids. Be imperfect, let go. My friend Kate told me what a relief it was when she stopped hassling her teenage son about smoking and just let him do it (an approach recommended by Summerhill School founder A. S. Neill, by the way). Give them respect and let them do what they want. This is not, incidentally, the same thing as licence. You do not allow them to smash up the car, spit at people, hit them. No. But you can be strict and free at the same time.
    When we live in a large group of people we are given a glimpse of what living without authority feels like, of living in a self-governed, self-determined way. No longer the tin-pot dictator in the home, flailing around, trying and failing to instil discipline, shouting and raving and slamming doors. We become, when tipsy, detached, amused, an equal with the child. They are running about in a gang doing whatever they want, and we are running about in a gang doing whatever we want. For a short time, before we return to the everyday tyranny of the family, we are living in a tribe, with no bosses, no timetables, no buses, no money to be earned or tax returns to be filed.
    This weekend we held a big party for eighty or so friends and neighbours and their kids. It was a huge pleasure to see the boys dashing here and there, all different heights, like the Bash Street Kids. There was no whining or pleading, justunsupervised play all day long. Yes, there were one or two bleeding noses and a bit of rubbish to clear up, but the day was more or less harmonious. Yes, they left their jumpers lying everywhere, but they are children and cannot be expected to think of others in an adult way. A. S. Neill wrote that he picked up piles of jumpers from around the grounds of Summerhill every day. However many times you tell them to pick up after themselves, they will not do it. So don’t bother. Let that one go. Accept that you are going to be picking up jumpers. It’s not really that bad.
    Kids belong to a different species. We can respect their ways but we cannot get into their heads. And every time we think we have come close we find that they have changed, grown out of that phase. The sentence ‘It’s just a phase’ is a great friend to the idle parent, and it is often true. You start worrying about some particular aspect of their behaviour