Parents shouldn’t be their teenagers’ 24-hour concierge service

A text message from Child A on Saturday morning: “If you’ve seen the crowd crush on the news, don’t worry, we are all safe.” I hadn’t seen the crowd crush on the news. I hadn’t been worried and now I still wasn’t worried. Child A was at Boardmasters, the Newquay festival that was, like all festivals, better in the old days. He had been safe. He was still safe. I carried on mowing the lawn.
Back home three days later we got the full story. He and his girlfriend had been right in the middle of it — 50ft from the stage when a surge from the back of the crowd created a crush. They had been trapped for 40 minutes and had not enjoyed it at all. Seven people had been hospitalised. It could have been much worse.
To know or not to know, that is the question. If he’d given us the full story on Saturday morning I’d have been worried. I might even have stopped mowing the lawn. But not being given the full story is worse because now I’m contractually obliged to worry all the time.
I don’t want to be worried all the time. It’s bad for your health. And your lawn. But that’s what parents do these days, isn’t it? And it’s getting worse. Child C went on a school trip to the Isle of Wight earlier this summer. Two of the parents kept us informed — minute by minute — of their progress through the day. The minibus has just arrived in Southampton. They’ve just got to the beach. The return ferry is running seven minutes late. How did they know all this, I asked at the pick-up. Find My Phone, said one. A tracker in the daysack, said the other. It’s CIA black ops parenting.
I went interrailing around Europe when I was 16. I got mugged in Rome, lost the top half of my big toe in Corfu and, after a translation error, got slightly kidnapped in Prague. I made a lot of very stupid decisions and got out of a lot of very silly scrapes. At no point did I call home — my £8-a-day budget didn’t stretch to international calls. I just left the UK on a ferry one day and turned up again with a slight limp a month later. The postcard I sent arrived another month after that.
Today it’s different. Kids still go travelling but they stay in regular touch, more so if they need something. In theory this sounds great. How lovely to have a vicarious gap year. In practice? I’ve been at a friend’s house when their 19-year-old missed a train… in Thailand. Our evening was put on hold while his mother rearranged the itinerary. There was a big debate about whether he should get the next train to Chiang Mai (from platform 4 in two hours) or stay another night in Bangkok (“at one of three hotel options close to the station I’ve got here, darling”). Could she just text him the links because his phone was running low on battery? Could she, in fact, book the ticket online? Thanks Mum.
What starts with trackers in daysacks appears to evolve into parents of young adults providing a 24-hour global concierge service.
At university in the Nineties there was one payphone in the accommodation block for 60 students. No one could ever use it because a girl whose name no one knew spent every waking hour on it, crying. Such was the depth of her grief, we assumed there had been a death in the family. A beloved grandparent, perhaps, or a pet guinea pig. It turned out she was really, really missing her boyfriend. The rest of us just had to get on with our first proper experience of life away from home.
It’s not like that now. From what I can see the 24-hour concierge service — no administrative task too small — extends into university and, oh God, beyond. Again, lovely they keep in touch. Again, not sure they need to keep in touch that much.
Child A will of course have ParentConcierge on speed dial when he starts university this autumn, but I hope he won’t use it… much. Keep in touch by all means and do tell us if something bad happens. Or don’t. But work things out for yourself. Life lessons can only be learnt through experience and the lesson this week is: don’t stand 50ft from the front of an overcrowded festival gig. Simple.