Learner Dad: Quality Street are absolutely incredible when your kids are in another room

Just look at that. And imagine the scene: complete access - and not a marauding, sweet-toothed child to be seen, muscling in on the green ones.

The weirdest thing happened last weekend.

Our two played with each other in another room for almost two hours. They didn’t come in to us looking for treats, didn’t ask for TV, there was no whining about someone breaking the rules of the game that they just made up. There was just silence, with the odd laugh. We drank tea and ate Quality Street as the rain poured down outside.

Someone re-gifted us a box of Quality Street. I’m not a great fan normally, but they taste absolutely incredible when your kids are playing in another room.

This is what I signed up for when I decided to become a parent.

I’ve felt like an eejit for the past couple of years, having fallen for images on the front of toy boxes. You know, the ones where two kids play away with a smile on their face when in reality they just empty all the bits out on the floor, one pulls the other one’s hair and you turn on the TV because you can’t handle the grief.

But now, my two are behaving like the kids on the box. It’s a miracle.

This reminded me of something a friend said when my daughter was born. Parenting is all about phases, as your kids grow up. Each phase has its own trials and rewards but, in general, things start to improve as they get older. (His weren’t teenagers yet before you fire up your email to send me a warning from hell.)

So basically we’re now in the ‘will play by themselves for a while’ phase. My two are aged seven and nine in case you’re tearing your hair out waiting for it to start in your house.

You probably couldn’t care less about my parenting theories. All you want to know is the name of the game that keeps them in another room for nearly two hours.

Glow Tracks. It’s a car and tracks thingy, with flexible tracks and a car-lift, so you can race around a fairly elaborate course until the batteries in the car run out. It’s also a blank canvas for two kids who want to invent their own world.

We have a 1970s-style hatch in our house, so we can stand in the kitchen and spy on our kids in the adjoining room. It turns out they aren’t using Glow Tracks for racing at all. They’ve invented this daft impenetrable game which I think involves cars driving between neighbouring towns. They’re getting ready to be adults.

If it means I can fire Quality Street into my mouth for an uninterrupted hour, I’m all for it. I’m also all for my daughter’s plan to get a video maker kit from Santa. It’s just as well she’s planning to get it from Santa. Apparently, they are very hard to come by in the shops. Everyone wants to be a YouTuber these days.

There’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to see creativity, take a look at some of the stuff teenage YouTubers are making. (Just do it with the sound down, their voices would cut right through you, it’s no place for the old.)

So all things considered, I’m delighted with this new age of creativity. The hardest part of parenting kids aged between five and ten is the constant flow of questions – everything from 'can I have a Kinder bar?' to 'what’s 11 multiplied by 12?'. I want to be there for them and answer all their questions, but I also want to lie down in a dark room and go to sleep for a week.

So here’s to them exploring the world by themselves in the future. And for anyone out there planning to re-gift me a box of Quality Street, I’m good for now. I’ll let you know if that changes.