What does it take for a parent to slow down and acknowledge that their desire or need to get something done quickly is achieved at the expense of their children?

There was an exposé recently in one national newspaper about the parents who are still strapping their four- and five-year-olds in pushchairs in order to get around supermarkets more quickly or to get from A to B with less hassle.

I’ve seen it for myself. I regularly saw one lively boy of five constantly straining and wailing to be freed from his pushchair prison on the school run a few years ago, and I longed to say to his mother: “Why don’t you let him out?”

But I didn’t know her well enough and so I did the typical British thing and said nothing.

I regret that now because perhaps I could have jolted his mother into realising just what she was doing, with a quick chat, not accusatory or judgmental, but a friendly conversation in the playground inviting her son to come and play with mine.

At my bus stop, I regularly see a mother struggling to push a buggy containing her four-year-old up the hill to a nursery. “Set him free!” I silently plead to her, worried about his inactivity.

The school run can be fraught for the parents, the vast majority of whom are mothers of children aged four and under who must join them on the school run.

Endlessly distracted by passing dogs, people who say hello, vehicles, shop windows, pieces of litter (and so on and so on), young children can extend a 15-minute school run into a 45-minute epic journey - and that’s just one way.

It’s so easy for a parent to look for ways to cut the time it takes, as time is precious and there are plenty of other things to pack into your day.

But – and this is a big but – physically confining children who are perfectly capable of walking, albeit slowly, is not only damaging their health but also their interest in the world around them and to the connection with the parent they are with.

From the moment they learn to walk, children are desperate to walk, run, skip, hop and jump – it’s part of their development and is fundamental to their fitness levels throughout their lives.

When you add up the hours small children spend strapped into car seats as well as pushchairs and supine in front of screens at home, it all adds up to a significant proportion of their childhood years.

They are hours previous generations spent on the move – and it was taken for granted because no one ever thought the hours of physical movement would be displaced so quickly, so comprehensively and so readily by their parents.

This generation of children, of course, will not know what they are missing out on.

The wailings of restless boys and girls strapped into immobility go unheard because convenience is often more important to parents at that particular moment.

They are too busy to see into the future, when their child may develop obesity and heart failure due to a lack of fitness, the kind of tunnel vision that will afflict this generation of youngsters more used to living in the virtual world than the real world, and, as revealed by Biology Journal last week, higher levels of dementia because they will have lower levels of vitamin D thanks to a life spent indoors in front of screens.

My three children are older now, but I can still remember the slow walks, reading out the make and colour of every car we passed (in streets lined with parked cars) to my toddler son to and from the school my older children attended.

He and I held hands and talked together, looking into each other’s faces, almost every step of the way. The walks took ages but I knew that and left myself plenty of time for dawdling. If we ran late because of a last minute nappy, I collected my other children late, and that was that. They didn’t suffer – they knew I would always be there, and I was.

Making time for small children is vital. And the memories created in slow time last far longer than those moments when you are rushing from place to place.

Great night at Little Bay
I had a fabulous few days last week with my mother and my sister, who were visiting from the Midlands.
The highlight was a brilliant night out at Little Bay, Peter Ilic’s bohemian restaurant on Kings Road with a bit of a difference.
You have to go there. Especially for the Opera Mayhem nights.
The restaurant is styled like a grand theatre, all opulent red and gold, with balconies, red velvet curtains and gold swags, and opera singers performing live. 
On the night we went fellow Midlander and soprano Adele Bates performed live to spectacular effect, moving from table to table as she enacted the story to diners – and she’s funny too. A night to remember!
And let’s not lose this jewel in Brighton’s crown. 
As The Argus reported in June, it has “suffered a massive loss of customers” after people have been avoiding the area because of the roadworks outside, caused by the collapse of the road nearby.
So I don’t feel at all guilty plugging it.