23 January

I get exhausted even watching the curated lives helicopter parenting creates for kids. Trying to create ‘enriching experiences’ for the kids etc. The kids nearly always overly anxious and precious about everything, because they’re so coddled and their lives so planned. They grow up so bored by everything, they’ve never had to amuse themselves for even a day. Their endless activities more a marker of status for their parents (who post them to social media as part of their own adult status games) than anything about them. Our own kids did only a fraction of the sorts of enriching activities many others did, growing up. But how are they now? Tough as nails. Independent. Not swayed by ‘what everybody else is doing’. Not anxious. We kept them out of the usual child and adult status games as much as possible, which could be tough at times. But the payback is immense. I agree with the DH Lawrence that pretty much the best thing you can do for kids, in life and in school, is to leave them alone. Leave them to contemplate life, and find their place in it.