Issue 22 - Summer 2016

But the shackles had been broken and I
knew it was the start of something different,
something scary and something I’m going to
really struggle with.
He’s only seven but he’s beginning to realise
there’s a big wide world out there. And who
am I to stop him?
Thirty years ago those summers were mine.
You wouldn’t see me for dust at weekends
and during school holidays, with that best
friend needing to be surgically removed at
bedtimes.
Without a Smartphone Facebook status to be
updated, it was dawn to dusk exploration, as
long as I touched base a few times during the
day of course.
Admittedly I was a little bit older, but however
much you dress it up or try to pretend
otherwise, the world was a very different
place back then.
Those endless golden days out on the
streets, with no hope of contacting home
unless you had 20p in your pocket and a
phone box nearby, are sadly long gone.
Whether we like it or not, society has
changed, and with it childhood has taken a
tumble. Not irreversibly so, but enough to
make young parents too wary to wave off
without a care.
Barry Wood is an
ex journalist now
working for the NHS in
Lincolnshire. A father of
two boys and husband
to one Portuguese wife,
he blogs regularly as
Desperate Dad.
Read more adventures:
barrylwood.wordpress.com
Facebook: Desperate Dad
Twitter: @Dad_Desperate
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Schools do not hold eye tests
Today, letting either of my blonde bombshells
walk to school, the park or friends’ houses
alone seems completely out of the question
for me and I can’t see it ever being the
answer.
How to reconcile this and determine at
exactly what age I will feel ok about them
doing it is something that’s going to keep me
awake of a night or ten dozen that’s for sure.
So for now I think it’ll be little and not
too often, a bit of appropriately managed
freedom, until I’m prepared for the apron
string elastic to snap once and for all.
And you never know, while I’m still clinging
on in desperation we might even hit some of
those sensational summers together.
As that inevitable freedom beckons and
childhood hangs by its heartbreakingly final
floundering threads.
What they see
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