Growing up should be an incredibly fun part of life, filled with plenty of joy, curiosity, friendship and adventure. Stories I have are about times when things have gone horribly wrong, or where my friends and I got into trouble for knocking on neighbour’s doors and running away in the dead of night (and then sometimes getting caught and being marched back to your house to face your parents). Good times!

Our children don’t’ appear to have as much freedom these days, and instead have a somewhat more sanitised version of what it means to grow up. I must say though, that their experience does appear to have a lot more pitfalls than mine did – I didn’t have to contend with social media or the pressure to have the latest of everything. My childhood consisted of being very content, and my friends and I only had to be concerned with getting home before the street lights turned on. We were ‘free-range’ children.

In his most recent blog, a South African colleague of mine, Timothy Jarvis, asks if our children’s childhoods have been rewired in some way, and draws much of his inspiration from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation. He also draws attention to some of the thinking going on in independent schools across the world at the moment.

Has childhood been rewired?   – There's a Hadeda in my Garden (timothyjejarvis.blog)

I hope that it will provide some food for thought as we head into half-term.

Have a good break.

Craig Cuyler
Designated Safeguarding Lead /
Director of Wellbeing / Head of PSHEe