Hey parents, leave your kids alone

Kids should be allowed to eat sweets and watch TV — in moderation — according to the UK’s National Centre for Social Research. At long last someone is talking sense, says Suzanne Harrington, who advocates a ‘healthy neglect’ approach to parenting.

REMEMBER that Pink Floyd chorus “Hey teacher leave those kids alone”? Now that it’s the summer holidays, perhaps we need to change the words: hey parents, leave your kids alone. Step away from the schedule, resist the over planning. In this era of helicopter parenting and tiger moms, whatever happened to benign neglect? What ever happened to unstructured mooching?

Benign neglect is very different from actual neglect, which on any level — physical, emotional, intellectual — is never a good parenting strategy. Benign neglect, on the other hand, is just letting kids get on with it. It is long-leash parenting within consistent boundaries. Because while obviously we mean well, is structuring their summer holidays down to the last tennis lesson, the last museum visit, ever a good idea? Do we have to patrol childhood so much?