Leave kids alone!

According to this article:

the idle parent is a responsible parent because at the heart of idle parenting is a respect for the child, a trust in another human being. It is the irresponsible parent who hands the child over to various authorities for its education and care, whether that is childminders, schools, CBeebies or the virtual world of Habbo Hotel. Or it is the parent who tries to impose his own vision on the children and does not simply let them be.

Anybody else for "idle professoring"?

We don't care about status and career advancement and how we are perceived by others. We are free of all of that rubbish. We simply want to enjoy our lives and to give our children a happy childhood. What greater gift could there be from a parent?

Hmmm... that sounds just about as self-righteous as parents who have the opposite position.

Instead of talking to friends and neighbours, anxious people seek advice in books, websites and internet forums.

So why are you writing an article about this on the Internet?!

Be weak! Give up! You can't do everything. Lower your standards. Get friends to help you.

I don't want friends to help me lower my standards! How dare you!

On the other side, somewhere in the distance, the children play. I don't bother them and they don't bother me.

Maybe there's something wrong with you if your kids don't want to play with you...

I am a disaster-prone, chaotic layabout and so should warn you not to listen to my advice. Certainly my friends say the idea of me advising other parents on childcare is absurd.

Geez, you go from self-righteous to self-wrongous quite quickly.

Sorry, that was a dumb article after all... but fun to read!

As for the issue at hand, surely there's a balance between leaving kids alone and not... don't leave them alone too much, but don't bother them too much. A true happy childhood is as elusive as a true happy adulthood. We will just have to wait for the happy-drug with no bad side effects to come along, and then everything will be fine...