32. Wrapped in cotton wool: Why I’m so reluctant to let my kids out of my sight

'I'll be fine, Mum (cough, splutter) Just fine.'

Can you ever keep your kids safe? It worries me a lot, especially with the school holidays coming up. The youngest is always falling flat on his face when running after his brother but rather than let him learn from his mistakes, I shout after him: ‘STOP.’ And when he doesn’t stop, I grasp him by the hand and hold onto him for dear life, despite his struggle to release himself from my bony manacle.

Part of the reason for this is because he now weighs about the same as a big sack of potatoes. King Eddies. And my ageing back just can’t handle the strain of bearing his weight to or from nursery as he screams the place down after his latest Face-Meet-Pavement-Pavement-Meet face whoopsie daisy.

But the bigger reason is that I can’t bear to see him hurt. His tears drown my insides, turning them to mush. I would do anything to take the pain away, wish it onto myself. Give it to me, give it to me, I can handle it. He can’t.

Some of this paranoia stems from the pain I saw his big brother in when he was six weeks old. He had fluid on his lungs, and because he was so little, he couldn’t cough it up, clear it out. Child 2 became so breathless, so congested, that we had to call an ambulance. We took him to A&E and spent an anxious four hours as the doctors examined him, stuck things down his throat, pulled bungee ropes of snot out of his tiny frame, and then admitted him to hospital for a week.

My now-wife and I spent every waking moment by his bedside, giving hourly bulletins to his big sister’s dad. We’d avoided all eye contact with each other for fear of seeing what the other was thinking, and those thoughts were this: ‘Are we going to lose him?’

Our little boy was sending us different messages. He had tubes coming out of his nose, but despite his fragility, his eyes were always strong, always saying: ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be fine. Honest. I promise. Swear to God. On a stack of Bibles.’

Parenthood, eh?

His little brother had no such issues with his health. He was born on the living room carpet as a David Attenborough documentary was playing in the background. He was strong and robust, emerged with a full head of flowing locks and a glint in his eye that said: ‘I’m going to be trouble.’ But he never has been. Except for the falls when he runs, and the occasional bout of Youngest Child Tyranny, which he exercises sparingly – thank God – to get his own way with his older siblings.

But despite this, our scare with Child 2 remains with me. I’m over-protective. If I didn’t have a bizarre phobia to the sound of cotton wool being pulled apart, I would buy it in great big blankets and wrap all three of them in the stuff. Instead, I do the next best thing: I never let them out of my sight. OK, obviously I did when I was at work, I do when they’re at school, but that ‘s because I know their teachers will take care of them, and their mother would fight Mr Attenborough’s rhinos and lions for them.

But since I’ve become their full-time dad/stepdad, the responsibility burdens me like a yoke.

I shouldn’t be like this. When I was growing up, I hardly saw my parents because they were always at work. Even at weekends, they were so exhausted from working, they had precious little time, let alone energy, to supervise me and my three younger brothers. We looked after ourselves, just got on with it, and had the most amazing adventures. We’d catch trains into Manchester, nipping past the railway guards; go exploring in the woods, looking for tadpoles and frogs. Even the resident paeodphile didn’t freak us out. We’d just laugh at him, chuck some stones at him and send him and his pathetic appendage packing.

When we got home, Mum would ask us what we’d got up to that day, where we’d been, who we’d met. And we’d just shrug: ‘Not much.’

Nowadays, we corrall our kids to protect them from all that. And, to my disbelief, I am one of those parents.

I can’t help myself. Danger seems to be all around. I won’t let my kids cross the road to the park on their own because I see the obliviousness to all things small in drivers’ eyes. Regular readers, will recall the story of my wife’s friend whose childminder was hit by a car, which left her friend – and us – thinking: ‘What if her child had been with her.’

It’s stuff like that that fuels the paranoia.

And stuff like this: my next door neighbour John is having his house decorated at the moment. He’s got a two-year-old daughter and she is, like all toddlers, curious about Real Men With Jobs use so he briefed and super-briefed the decorators that they must always, ALWAYS take their tools home with them at the end of each day.

Then a couple of weeks ago, after the supermarket run, they came home and the little ‘un headed into her playroom. As John and his wife unpacked the shopping, they heard a low moan and immediately knew something was wrong. They dropped their Weetabix and Kia Ora and raced to the playroom to find their daughter convulsing. She’d taken a swig from a bottle of white spirits which, even though it had a child-lock cap, had been left loose. They left their shopping on the doorstep and raced her to hospital. And that’s where she stayed for the best part of a week. She had severe burns to her oespoghagus. Thankfully, she’s on the mend, and hopefully, will be driving her Mummy and Daddy bananas again with her ‘Why this? Why that?’ questions very soon.

My kids don’t share this fear of the world. Why would they? They’re kids. Last summer, not long after I’d been made redundant, the eldest child – eight at the time – expressed her desire to loosen the apron strings a little. I walk her to school every day, but she felt she was grown up enough to make the journey alone.

‘My friends do it,’ she said.

‘Yes, but they live around the corner. We’re a mile away,’ I replied.

But my wife saw things differently. ‘Independence is good for them,’ she said.

I thought she’d lost her marbles. But then she came up with a Cunning Plan: tail her. Brilliant. So I did.

On the day in question, I kissed my stepdaughter goodbye and Set Off For Work. Only I didn’t, you see. I followed her every step of the way, hiding behind bushes so she didn’t see me, watching her cross roads, negotiate the pedestrian traffic, until she was safely into school. She didn’t have a clue.

So when she suggested that she take her younger brother for a picnic in the park – just them, on their own, with no adult supervision – I readily agreed. I packed them a lunch, waved them goodbye, then ran as fast as I could to a position above the spot where I’d told them to head for and lay in the long grass and watched their every move. There was a hairy moment when a dog came sniffing, and its owner gave me a I’m-Going-To-Call-The-Police look until I explained myself, but other than that, it went beautifully. C1 treated C2 to an ice cream with the money we’d given her; C2 behaved like a Sensible Child (for the first, and perhaps the last, time in his life) and we felt we’d given C1 the respect she had earned.

But we didn’t do the experiment again. As far as I was concerned, it was a one-off. Then last week, two things happened on the same day. Child 3 was due to go on a class trip but, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I couldn’t make it. I’ve accompanied him on all his trips so far, but I had to bow out of this one. And as far as I was concerned, if his Dad couldn’t go, then he couldn’t go. What if something happened to him? While I wasn’t there?

His teacher told me not to be silly. My wife told me not to be silly. And so I stopped being silly, and let him go.

I spent the morning fretting and checking my phone for messages until, at last, the time came to collect him from nursery. He ran into my arms with a huge beaming smile on his face.

‘How was it?’ I asked.

‘Goats. Chicken. Baa lambs.’

That was enough. He’d had a great time. He was happy, and most importantly, he was safe.

Unfortunately, though, his exertions had taken their toll and as soon as we arrived home after picking up C1, he fell fast asleep on the carpet in front of Rastamouse.

This scenario created a bit of a problem. Child 2 was on a playdate with a friend a few streets away. Never wake a sleeping toddler or you will pay the price. That has always been my experience. Then C1 came up with her own Cunning Plan (she takes after her mother).

‘I’ll get Tom,’ she said.

Cue more fretting and anxiety. But after a phone call to C2’s friend’s mum, the logistics were put in place, and so I sent C1 out into the big wide world of Walking Down A Street And Ringing A Doorbell. I waved, I watched, I waited. And ten minutes later, C1 delivered C2 safely to the door.

Time to cut the apron strings, Keith, and send her for the weekly shop next time!