Six-week hols are bad for kids? Oh, give us a break
Only a week to go before my “battery hen” goes back to school, having lost the use of her legs and forgotten the seven times table after being glued to the sofa for six weeks.
Or at least that’s what the Office for the Children’s Commissioner for England claims in its recent hysterical report warning that instead of roaming the streets like their parents’ generation, kids are being cooped up like battery chickens over the long holidays, scratching at their digital devices with a single clawed finger.
Tutting as they fold their arms over a roll-on girdle, the report’s authors concluded that children are experiencing “dramatic and significant” reductions in their fitness over the holidays, and forgetting some of what they’ve learned in a “summer slide”.
Granted, giving children a six-week school break to help bring in the harvest may be a bit outdated, especially as most kids can barely help bring in shopping from the car. But the modern school day is just as relentless as the Victorian sweatshops, with kids endlessly pushed and tested, and getting up and going to bed in the dark the rest of the year.
I breathe a sigh of relief every time school breaks up. For a few weeks I don’t have to worry about homework, scraping E. coli off uniforms and kit bags, juggling school pick-ups with work, and rushing everywhere until we’re both so tired, a few weeks picking hops would be light relief.
As for the “summer slide”, when I get back from holiday, I spend the first half an hour in Gatwick resting my head against the ATM trying to remember my PIN.
Kids forget things all the time, which is why the school curriculum is an endless repetition of facts and figures, until some of it finally sticks.
It’s also disingenuous to blame the long break for turning our kids into lardy arses. Fitness experts will tell you that even a two-week break from a regular exercise regime will undo all the good work. And anyway, I don’t remember climbing any mountains during my summer holidays when I was sent to stay with my grandparents in Ireland. The biggest risk I faced was dying of boredom.
And I’d like to burst the bullsh** bubble that my generation spent long, hot summer days playing outside all day until we came home, tired and dirty but happy. The tsunami of historic child abuse cases since then has revealed we were literally “care free” – and easy pickings for predatory scout masters, priests, children’s home staff and radio DJs.
However, I do admit that my daughter has become a battery hen this summer. But only because of the squawking she makes when the iPad runs out of power.
Picking hops would be light relief