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The Idle ParentDon't take your kids to amusement parks or museums.

By Tom HodgkinsonPosted Tuesday, April 21, 2009, at 6:47 AM ET

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This is not the idle way.

The truly idle delight, instead, in staying at home. At home, you are free. You can create your own fun, at no cost whatsoever. We often now stay at home all day on Saturday and all day on Sunday. We play in the kitchen. We make food together. One happy day, I sat in the armchair reading my William Morris biography while Henry played on the ﬂoor with his toy tractors, Delilah cut up bits of paper, and Arthur read The Beano. Later I found myself making a pair of sunglasses out of a cereal packet with Delilah.

People are scared to stay at home all day because they think the kids will get bored. But things happen of their own accord. You don't need to leave the house. We think we are enjoying ourselves at the theme park, but really it's a disabling sort of fun because it's passive. It actually follows the familiar pattern of 21^st-century life: long periods of boredom interspersed with the occasional thrill. And we don't have to make any effort beyond getting out our wallets. The rides, in return for cash, hurl us around in a parody of real pleasure. At home you can play Scrabble, you can eat on the ﬂoor, the kids can make dens. You can learn how to play together, or you can get on with your own jobs and pleasures and let the children exist around you. And you don't even have to bother to play with them. My friend James doesn't play with his son. I asked him to explain himself:

Fertile neglect is the name of that policy: leaving the boy to his own devices so I can pursue mine and he can develop those solitary skills that will serve him in future airports, waiting rooms and prisons. It came about simply because I found actual down-at-his-level waving-tiny-ﬁgurines PLAYING to be, for some reason, soul-destroying—the arbitrary and despotic movements of the child-mind and all that. Bonus side effect: when you do consent, in moments of magnanimity, to lower yourself to their play-level they are incredibly grateful. ...

You can also use time with the children to learn things yourself. Now is the time to teach yourself to draw. We give too much responsibility for learning and being creative to the schools. We must learn and teach at home. This need not be a trial but can be a great joy for parent and child.

But you must always make sure that you are genuinely enjoying yourself. Doing things for other people's sake will lead to feelings of corrosive resentment that will then ﬁnd expression in some unhealthy fashion, like cancer. Your ﬁrst responsibility is to your own happiness. If you are unhappy and you do things merely out of a sense of duty rather than genuine love and generosity, then others will sense that and ugliness will result.