The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids (27 page)
Read The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids Online
Authors: Tom Hodgkinson
These children would think nothing of walking three miles to school, or five miles to the nearest market town. Despite – or perhaps because of – their poverty, they grew up courteous and strong and self-reliant, a contrast to the pampered and spoilt children and adults of today, so often whining, self-pitying and rude. In those old days amusements were self-created. The children made up their own fantasy worlds in the woods and fields by day, and at night they were entertained by the storytelling of their grandparents.
Another problem with the digital world is that it yet further atomizes us and splits families into a seething group of individuals all silently pursuing their own interests through the medium of the computer. As Philip Pullman has said:
Something else which is very salient is the fragmentation of family life, especially when every member of the family has their own i-Pod, their own computer, games console and television, and they don’t exist as a unit at all, except by the virtue of living in one house. They all go off and do their own things, they don’t talk. Most of their attention is not devoted
to the unit, to the maintenance of the unit, the group, it’s devoted to the gratification of themselves alone. And I think that’s awful.
This steady process of the isolation of the individual from the community has been going on at least since 1535, when, following Henry VIII’s smashing up of the old ways, we began the shift from being a community-minded people to being a set of brittle individuals each ‘secure from human intrusion’, as Mr Wimbush predicts in this chapter’s epigraph. And our creativity and identity are expressed through our choice of purchases; as Penny Rimbaud writes: ‘I think therefore I buy.’
We should be alert, too, to the language of computer software. Have you noticed how often computers ‘allow’ you to do things? ‘This new Facebook application
allows
you to send a birthday card to everyone in your group.’ This makes the computer into a sort of authority, which gradually allows us to do more and more things – and we are expected to be grateful. The language of these programmes, tellingly, lacks any subtlety and relies heavily on the use of the punctuation mark: ‘Invite Your Friends!’ ‘Browse Through Profiles!’ ‘Get Started on MySpace!’ Anyone who respects the written word, and indeed beauty, should be deeply saddened to witness the abuses that these computer geeks are inflicting on the language and should reject the Hobbesian world view from which computer technology clearly springs.
But it’s hard. Only yesterday Delilah said: ‘I want a laptop for my birthday.’ But she is six! What does she want with a laptop? No, no, no! I am not going to spend five hundred pounds so she can carry round a device which will separate
her from the people around her and double as a shop that never closes.
The computer is an authority figure crossed with a device for securing new markets for global brands. Coca-Cola is more recognizable than a leek to small children. That’s because Coca-Cola spends $2 billion a year on marketing. Coca-Cola is the world’s number-one brand and it never, ever stops advertising. I’m always amazed when people say, ‘Oh, I’m not affected by advertising.’ If we really did ignore ads, then companies wouldn’t bother to spend these vast sums on brand promotion. Imagine what good all that money could do; imagine the beautiful buildings it could build, and the gardens and parks that could be created, the seeds that could be sown, the bread that could be baked, the hungry people who could be fed. Imagine the works of art that could be commissioned if all that money that has been spent on advertising was spent in another way.
What practical steps, then, can we parents take to resist the tyranny of the computer? My pragmatic approach could be described as: ‘Don’t ban. Minimize.’ The problem with banning is that of course it instantly makes the thing banned even more attractive than it was before.
Recently we have opted to limit screen-time for our children to an hour a day. My original idea was half an hour. I told a friend with computer-loving kids our plan. Now this friend’s son carries his laptop wherever he goes. ‘Half an hour a day? We’re trying to get it down to half an hour an hour!’ Once these boys played for so long on their computers they got laptop burns on their thighs.
In order to minimize, you need, as a parent, also to lead them into other activities – in a sense, to teach them how to
play. Here is the great advantage, for example, of Wrestling Time. If I teach them wrestling, they will be able to wrestle each other when I am not there. Lately, after tea we have been going into the garden and playing French cricket for an hour, which is enormously enjoyable. What struck me was the huge amount of laughing that went on: I realized that people very rarely laugh in front of the TV or computer. I find also that once I have set the children off on a game I can quietly sneak off and get back to my own selfish pleasures. In a more natural society where the kids would have played in large groups, the older kids would have taught the younger ones how to play (as they still do at school, passing down hundreds of years of playground rhymes and games). Now parents might have to put a little more effort into teaching, if they do not want their children to be easy victims of the consumer world.
Computer games also cause arguments. ‘I regret the day that plaything of Satan came into my house,’ says my Belgian friend Julie of her Nintendo Wii. Her two boys, she says, argue incessantly over whose turn it is and so forth. Computers divide, it is in their nature. Whereas something as simple as a ball brings people together.
I sometimes wonder how the consumer world can be so immensely attractive to children. Why, given the choice, would they rather shop online than go and play in the fields? Perhaps it is the endless novelty. Is it because shopping and online worlds give them a sense of control over their own lives, a sense that is denied them by their parents? Perhaps the computer offers children a vision of freedom that can be glimpsed from within their contained lives, rather as it does for an adult stuck in a boring job. Certainly there is undeniably something comforting about the screen: if Arthur is
angry or sad, he will often be found on RuneScape. If that is the case, then we need to enlarge kids’ freedoms continually. I feel sad when I reflect on the happy lives of the poverty-stricken inhabitants of Lark Rise and compare them to our cash-rich but conflict-filled modern family lives. What has gone wrong? Why have we become so pathetic, so reliant, so full of complaint, so anxious, so nervous, so fearful? My idle parent idea really is to bring back strength, well-being, fulfilment, satisfaction and happiness not just to children but to parents as well. Disappointed parents are the worst, because they get pushy, hoping that their kids will succeed where they themselves failed.
Above all, I think, we need to teach by example, not with authority. If we are happy, or at least cheerful and satisfied with life, then the child will naturally assume happiness to be the normal state. A manifestly unhappy parent telling their child what to do is not a very good advertisement for their own system. ‘If that’s what you think, then I’m going to do the opposite so I don’t turn out like you.’ Don’t lay down rules. Then your children cannot be rebellious.
I am now in the golden age of family life. The baby years are over. No more nappies. Much more sleep. The children are now three, six and eight. We have a few more years to go before the trials of teenagers. I have reflected deeply on family life, made many mistakes, and while I am still confused, I am at least certain that I want to enjoy it, and that means first and foremost creating an enjoyable life for myself. The other things will follow from that. I am not waiting for a wife or a boss or a government or a child to make me happy. I am mindful of the importance of the present moment, because, in actual fact, that’s all we have. All else is illusion. I have also realized that, particularly while the children are small, it is far
better to be poor in money (or credit) but rich in time than vice versa. We will always be able to eat and to sleep in a bed at night. So I would rather be at home and go without a holiday and drive an old banger or have no car at all than work too hard and spend the cash. And there’s no need to suffer: I am going to keep drinking beer, reading books and playing the uke. A life free from pleasure is no life at all.
Many thanks to Victoria and the children, also to publisher Simon Prosser and agent Cat Ledger, copy-editor Emma Horton and all my friends for the inspiring conversations I had with them on these topics, in particular Heather Hodson, Dan Kieran, James Parker, Murphy Williams, John Nicholson and John Lloyd, plus Eefke and Julie, the idle mums of Antwerp, and Penny Rimbaud and Bronwen Jones.
Adams, Richard
Watership Down
209
advertising
181
,
215
,
218
on television
82
,
86
,
88–9
of toys/games
81–2
see also
consumerism
Aesop
Fables
201
Ahlberg, Allan and Janet
198
Amin, Karima
204
animals
149–59
for food
153
,
155
,
156
as pets
150–53
,
157–8
working
156–7
Arabian Nights
see
Thousand and One Nights, The
Arnold, Thomas (Dr Arnold of Rugby)
65
au pairs
see
nannies/au pairs
authority
see
discipline
Barrie, J. M.
My Lady Nicotine
198
Peter Pan
198
Baxter, Richard
61–2
Beatles, The
111
bedtime
see
sleep
bees
155
Bentham, Jeremy
173
blackberry-picking
45–6
Blake, William
43
,
76
,
171
,
198
,
199
,
205
‘The Garden of Love’
68–9
‘Infant Sorrow’
181–2
his poetry
198–9
boarding schools
69–70
Bob the Builder
87
bonfires
123–4
books
see
reading/books
Briggs, Raymond
200
Bruegel, Pieter
Children’s Games
50
,
51
Burton, Richard
The Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights)
209
Burton, Robert
The Anatomy of Melancholy
51
Carroll, Lewis
200–201
cats
150–52
child labour
1–12
,
155–6
in eighteenth/nineteenth centuries
119–20
,
205
domestic tasks
2
,
3
,
4–5
,
8–9
,
146–7
in medieval period
122
payment for
4
working together
4–5
,
10
childcare
1
,
98–9
as a burden
1–3
,
6
,
24
,
25–6
by grandparents
26
nannies/au pairs
26–7
,
98
,
99
as playing
6–7
,
26
,
161–2
,
163
childcare manuals
20–22
,
31
,
62–3
,
92
,
121
,
140–41
see also
Liedloff, Jean
:
The Continuum Concept
;
Locke, John
:
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
;
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
:
Emile
clothes, for children
31–2
swaddling
182
Cobbett, William
11
,
76
,
153
Cottage Economy
123
Rural Rides
11
,
188–9
Coca-Cola
219
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
103
community living
8
,
9
,
52
,
53
,
55
,
57–9
,
98–100
,
218
computers/Internet
40
,
42
,
64
,
82
,
90
,
167–8
,
214–21
as an authority figure
218
,
219
consumerism and
215
,
218
electronic games
40
,
42
,
167–8
,
220
limited access for children
219–20
consumerism
4
,
5
,
9–10
,
19–20
,
33
,
34–5
,
41
,
48
,
168
,
179
,
218
,
220–21
advertising
82
,
86
,
88–9
,
181
,
215
,
218
toys as influenced by
77–84
conversation
144–6
John Locke on
145–6
see also
words/language