"Jimmy-Joe, he's a big boy cos that's why he's 4..."
A 4-year-old named Jimmy-Joe spent the afternoon playing in our house.
Big Brother was beyond delighted. When you live in a beach-side town in the sticks, in a street populated by children who play out until what must be way past bedtime, it is a thing of great excitement to have friends who come and call for you. It's 8.30pm now, only just beginning to edge slowly towards dusk, and the street is still full of little kids.
Daddy elicited sufficient information from Jimmy-Joe to establish where he lived, and then went to let his parents know that he was in our house. They were nonchalant about it; mildly curious as to where he'd got to but that was it. Not a jot concerned about the fact that they don't know us from Adam, or that their kid had wandered into our house without letting them know his whereabouts.
I'm sort of horrified, and then even more horrified at my urban paranoid neurotic ways. Children are supposed to grow up with this sort of innocent, care-free freedom, right? That's part of the reason we chose to move to a place like this, right? The Boy told me later this evening that he was invited into Jimmy-Joe's house to play, a fact of which he is so proud he was practically bursting. And yet I'm quite relieved that Jimmy-Joe is allowed into our house, because being able to invite him back should soften the blow that The Boy will sustain when I break the news that there is no way in heck that he's going to the house of a kid I don't know, without me. No sir-ee. Paranoid and neurotic and out-of-step with the protocol of life in a beach-side town in the sticks, but that kid isn't going anywhere any time soon. And definitely not even when he's 4.
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It's hard isn't it when different families do different things? My children get v jealous that the 6 and 4 year old next door get to play outisde in the garden way after my two are in bed.... and their parents get very jealous that mine are still in bed at 7am way after their two have got up.....
I started to let Belle go to school friend's houses at 4 and 1/2 - I didn't know their parents except to say hi to att he school gate but I felt I really had to let her go despite a certain level of paranoia about what they were really like behind closed doors... Last weekend we had a church fete on what could fairly be described as a sink estate. Loads of local kids and loads of church kids in a grassy square. Probably well over 100 flats within 30 seconds walk from the square. I counted precisely one other family who were keeping their children within view let alone with arm's reach. i felt a bit paranoid and stupid - but ont he other hand I alaso felt relatively safe... I don't think it's urban paranoia, I think it's 21st century paranoia. For all that people say we mollycoddle our kids too much these days - it's the same people who are the most vociferous in criticising parents when something awful does happen...