They loved it, except when mishaps occurred

11:20am Monday 18th August 2008

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DO I wrap my children in cotton wool? The answer came through loud and clear while on our annual holiday in Sandsend.

Peaceful, car-free Sandsend, where we let our battery-farmed children loose for a bit of free-range living.

Off they went, with a crowd of other youngsters, playing games, running, leaping, climbing trees, scrambling up hillsides, wading through streams.

And all without supervision. In other words, living the sort of life that me and my friends lived every day as children.

They loved it – except when mishaps occurred. Our so-called ‘cotton wool kids’ can’t deal with those.

“MY KNEE, I’VE HURT MY KNEE!” wailed my daughter after stumbling while running down a gravel path during a game of hide and seek. She hobbled in, blood trickling down her leg. I wiped it away and, although it was a cut rather than a graze, it was the sort of wound that, as children, me and my feral pals would have barely noticed. Had I suffered the same minor injury, aged 12, I’d have cleaned it up – probably using my sleeve – and carried on playing. In those days, when we were out from dawn until dusk, it would have taken nothing less than a severed limb to persuade us to stop playing and go home.

“Will I have to go to hospital?” my daughter asked as my husband bandaged her up.

That was the first of many bumps and scrapes that sent my daughters rushing back for comfort. One fell while rock pooling and wailed for ages. “How long will it be like this,” she asked, pointing at her bruise. No doubt it hurt, but in my youth it wouldn’t have registered on the injury scale.

Children are deprived of rough and tumble, they only ever risk injury climbing out of the 4x4 on the school run. While on holiday, I asked a couple of other parents, who both said they would never allow their children to run about freely at home.

Where have we gone wrong? I’m terrified to allow my children to ride their bikes in our relatively quiet street. I know there wasn’t as much traffic when I was little, but has it got so bad that we shouldn’t let children out at all? My husband thinks not. He thinks I’m wrong to keep them within the confines of the garden.

Even the Government is helping to mollycoddle children. It is investing thousands in play areas to encourage children to play outside, but these are artificial, with rubber surfaces for children to bounce off when they fall. We live near a playground where the fast-spinning roundabout was replaced with a go-slow model because a child hurt himself.

Children need to be let loose to experience fields, streams, ponds, hills, trees, and – dare I suggest it – roads, to build up their immune systems.

Of course, some children are allowed to do this already, prompting cries from other parents: “Oh, how irresponsible, how could they?”

I think a change of tack is needed.

My children are growing up. They need life skills.

For the rest of the holiday I’m going to let them off the leash – making sure I stock the first-aid cupboard in advance.