Don't get me wrong, I adore my children, But when I held those bundles of joy in my arms for the very first time, imagining how much fun we would have on our journey through life together, teaching each other as we skipped along on our merry way.

I never EVER thought that if i heard the words "I'm bored" one more time I would consider dropping them back at the hospital from whence they came.

I love my children, I do, I do, but half term while it is raining seems to be the equivalent of living in the Big Brother House, it starts off all fun and games and descends into a screaming match pretty quickly.

One of my friends, who I will call R (short for Aaaarrrggghhhhh)
summed it up for me yesterday. She has a high powered job, with at least 15 people under her, can multi-task like Vernon Kaye with 2 phones and has a reputation as a ball breaker.
Between sobs she explained that while she loved her children, she could honestly say that she didn't like them. She was sure that it had been easier for her parents. During school holidays she left the house at 10am, took some money for chips and spent the day round a friends house, annoying somebody elses parents.

But is that the problem? we cannot let our children roam the streets as we used to do. Sure we got in trouble, we played knock down ginger, we stayed out later than we were meant to, occasionally we got hurt. but we didn't come to serious harm. But these days it seems we would be failing in our duty as parents if we didn't at least kit out our children in Kevlar vests and flak jackets.

So what happens? we keep our children indoors, we buy them huge computer systems designed to make them live their life through a tv screen, we buy them DVDs and we keep them safe (Obese, but safe) Or we let them out, then we are bad parents who are contributing to the delinquency of the youth of today.

And if we keep them in, and keep them safe. you can bet your Blackberry that within one day they will be driving us insane with their feral cries of "i'm boreeeeeeeeeeeed"

And the only thing that contributes to is the insanity of the parents.