Can you enjoy a music festival with your kids?

A new survey shows one fifth of parents have taken an under-five to a festival. Is this a good idea? And if so, how do you make them sit through the Low Anthem? Try these tips … It was early Saturday afternoon at Larmer Tree Gardens, home of End of the Road festival. The Broken Family Band had taken to the stage and, as their opening chords rang out, my son – then five years old – flung himself to the ground at my feet. He clutched his hands to his ears and screamed: “No! No! No!” It’s not the kind of experience that leaves any remotely diligent parent thinking they’ve made the right choice about the weekend’s family entertainment. Nevertheless, according to a survey of 1,500 parents conducted for the baby and parenting website gurgle.com , a fifth of mums and dads have taken an under-five to a music festival in the past year. In the event, we had a decent time at End of the Road. My daughter – then nine – made a fortune collecting plastic glasses and claiming back the deposits. My son enjoyed the circus skills workshops and messing around in the woods. It was certainly a much happier experience than Latitude in 2007, when I had to threaten a drunk teen who was trying to push me and my son – three at that point – out of our spot at the front of stage for I’m from Barcelona . I can’t help but have mixed feelings about kids and festivals. On the one hand, every time I see one of those stories about someone giving birth at Glastonbury, the Daily Mail reader that lurks inside me insists the child should be taken into care immediately and the parents prosecuted. I feel only pity when I see photos of kids in buggies mired in several feet of mud. On the other, people I know and like, and on whom I have never called social services, take their kids to big festivals every year and the kids appear – at this stage – undamaged by the experience. It might be appropriate, though, to offer some guidance to those thinking about embarking on the family festival experience for the first time. 1. Smaller is better The bigger the crowd, the greater your paranoia about your kids disappearing. At End of the Road, it was possible for me to show my daughter where I was standing by the main stage and allow her to wander off, knowing where to find me. I wouldn’t try that at Reading. 2. Don’t expect to hear much music There’s a fighting chance your little ones will not want to listen to an hour of some bearded American with an acoustic guitar singing about death. They maywell find plenty to entertain them around a festival site, but it’s likely none of it will be musical. Ask yourself: do I really want to spend several hundred quid to hear no more than a couple of hours of music all weekend? Alternatively, go with another family so you can do babysitting shifts, enabling each set of parents to see some music unencumbered. 3. Don’t be too protective Your children will see and hear things you might prefer they didn’t. It can’t be avoided, so don’t sweat it. Equally, you’re in a large crowd of people and none of them – literally none – care about your parenting needs. So don’t set up a large picnic blanket with parasols and sunshades in front of the main stage so you can hear the music without your kids getting sunburnt. That is selfish and antisocial. 4. Nevertheless, some rules of parenting still apply Just because you’re at a festival, it’s not Lord of the Flies. It’s astonishing how many parents think they can let their kids turn feral the minute they’re on site. So, encourage your child not to take others’ food and drink, not to wreak carnage on other children who are playing their own games, not to treat the facilities as a giant adventure playground. 5. Go to a festival where you can go in and out easily You might find the kids’ facilities at the festival of your choice to be massively overburdened. It’s no fun for your kids to wait an hour for a five-minute go at making a fairy out of twigs and discarded gaffer tape. So it’s worth picking a festival that’s near other things, which you can easily drive to without facing an hour’s walk to your car and then enormous hassle trying to get back in. Our favourite thing at Latitude was spending Saturday morning on Southwold beach. We occupied the mornings at End of the Road by visiting Monkey World and going fossil hunting on the Jurassic shore. It made the kids much more amenable to the Low Anthem a couple of hours later. 6. Don’t be afraid to stay offsite Chances are you’re not going to be getting wildly intoxicated, so you’re likely to be able to drive away at the end of the evening. Rested kids are happy kids, and they might get a better night’s sleep in a local B&B than in a tent with some campers hosting an impromptu rave next door. This is not a fashionable view, I know. But it works for me. Pop and rock Festivals Children Michael Hann guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 18, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.