Stop fretting and enjoy some debauchery of your own

Allow me to share the wisdom I have gained from The Student going off to camp at Leeds Festival for several nights. I know there will be countless other parents like me, some with school-aged offspring, who are doing the same thing – worrying about everything that could go wrong.

I am here to reassure you there is an alternative to the constant fretting. (Let’s face it, most of us have been soaking up all the horror stories from other parents over the years, telling us what happened to their teenagers at various festivals).

It can be tempting to sit and worry over several days and nights, especially when communication from the offspring is patchy: “The wi-fi’s really bad here...” But there is a solution I can heartily recommend.

Stick your fingers in your ears, go “la, la, la” whenever anyone mentions festivals and hunker down for some debauchery of your own.

Obviously, not being in your teens when you are following this scientifically-proven advice, the type of debauchery may be on a slightly different level to that being experienced by your child but it can still provide a distraction.

Here are some tried-and-tested examples: Mr P and myself went to see the latest Mission Impossible film at the cinema – on a school night, if you don’t mind. And chips on the way home because we just don’t care.

We also binge-watched a Netflix series, with neither of us going: “Oh no, come on, it’s late, we should save the next episode until tomorrow night...” We live life to the full at Penman Towers.

We met some friends for lunch and instead of the usual “oh no, it’s lunchtime, I’ll just stick with water”, both of us got torn into the cocktails and then a glass of wine or two each. No talk of anyone’s children and what they might be getting up to as we got steadily blootered.

At home, we had meals where the no mobiles at the table rule was relaxed and at one exciting high-point, I even had a book open at the dinner table.

It worked. We all survived. Rock ‘n’ roll, baby, rock ‘n’ roll.

“Both of us got torn into the cocktails then a glass of wine or two each