We All Cherish Our Children's Futures

My daughter's primary school has a Student Council, a body I had previously thought existed only at "Grange Hill" and not in the real world. This evening the S.C. has organised a sleepover at the school, as a fund-raising exercise - it's true that not all the pupils are going (whether because they don't want to, or their parents don't want them to I don't know) but there were certainly quite a lot of little bods bobbing around when we dropped our littl'un off there earlier on.

Like terribly over-protective parents we have of course left a phone number for the school in case they need to contact us, although as yet we haven't heard anything, and the reality is that I expect she will have a good old time, and will be full of it (albeit, rather tired) when we pick her up in the morning.

But despite that, of course, I worry. I don't know what the odds of something bad happening to a child are - inevitably the news only ever reports the appalling tragedies, with no reference to the opposite end of the scale where millions of children happily survive each day without incident. But there is nevertheless a sufficient presence in the media of terrible things happening to children to make one uneasy about not having them in view. We live not all that far from Launceston, where Caroline Dickinson lived. And of course the newspapers were full of the Soham trial not that long ago. With all that going on, with the regular and alarming news about paedophile rings, and child pornography, and all the horrors that you can associate with that, it's probably little wonder that there is a temptation to be very protective of one's children.

The trouble with that of course is that there's only ever going to be so much you can do. A good analogy would be driving - you may be the best and safest driver in the world, but you can't do anything to prevent yourself encountering somebody who is dangerous. Likewise with children - you do as much as you can, of course, but you can't be there all the time.

At the moment our little girl isn't quite seven, and during the summer months when she wants to go to the park around the corner either me or my wife goes with her. At the age of six or seven it would seem unthinkable not to; but give it another few years and it would be equally absurd for her to want her parents hanging around all the time. It's only natural that at some point, even from a fairly young age, our children should get some independance. Although it might ease a worried mind to follow them around everywhere, it can't possibly be good for them in the long run.

Maybe things have always been like this. I percieve the question of the safety, or otherwise, of children to be a fairly modern thing, but then my being a parent is only a fairly modern thing too. When I was young I seem to remember playing outside away from home during the Summer holidays, for whole days at a time. I don't know that my parents were at home anxious and fearful all the time. On the other hand, I was at Primary School when Jeanette Tate (I'm almost certain that is the correct name, and if not somebody please correct me) went missing, and to this day I can still picture the photograph of her they used to show on the news. Before that, there were the Moors Murders of the 1960s. Maybe things have always been like this, but if they have it is certainly treated differently nowadays. As a general rule children don't play out on the streets like they used to - so is that because they are less safe than they used to be, or is it simply that we as a society are now more protective? Too protective perhaps? Last weekend we went to the garden centre, and a man, probably in his sixties, complimented my daughter on her hair, bemoaning his own thinning locks. I'm sure (but crucially, I can't say 100% sure) that he was just a kind gentleman saying hello, with no more sinister motive than just to be nice to someone. But it did unnerve me, and I think I just smiled and agreed, and then moved us both away to look at something else. Appropriate, or not? How confusing must it be to a child told never to speak to strangers, when that sort of thing happens?

In as far as I like to think about it at all, which of course I really don't, I like to think that things actually aren't any worse than they used to be, that it's simply that these stories are reported much more nowadays. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but I don't have any wish to examine the facts too closely. Although at the moment it's easy for me to say it, I really hope that I won't end up being over-protective of my daughter. It will undoubtedly worry me, but I hope that as she gets older we can let her go to the park without us, or down to her grandparents (my in-laws live at the other end of the village from us - not a huge distance, but alas that's no guarantee). Once she reaches eleven, the nearest Secondary School is three miles away which involves her getting a bus both ways. She'll certainly have to do that without us. And certainly it would have been easier tonight to tell her she couldn't go to the sleepover because she was too young, but sooner or later she will have to deal with the outside world on her own.

There isn't really a point to this column, except perhaps to try and get my thoughts into some sort of order. I think, in a nutshell, one of the hardest parts of being a parent is accepting that at the end of the day, there's only so much you can do. I won't say that I won't get any sleep tonight, but I shall probably go to bed a bit later than usual, and take that bit longer to get to sleep. And certainly, I'll be very pleased when we pick her up in the morning and find her absolutely fine.

Goodnight.

1st February 2004