Parenting: Cambridge adventurer Chris Howard and family are festival-bound

The ponchos are packed and Cambridge’s coast-walking dad Chris Howard and family are embracing another spirit-soaring summer of festivals, unicorn glitter tattoos and all

Through the summer months we get together with friends and families from all over. Our favourite pastime is to bundle down the motorway to a festival for a long weekend of camping, music, food and fun. Festivals, for me, are like primal gatherings reminiscent of that of our ancient ancestors. We’re all drawn around a focal point like a fire or stage to be part of a community. Since time immemorial we’ve listened and told stories and grown our society based on communal living.

Having set up camp, Thing One and another kid immediately test the boundary of the day (and roll straight through it) tipping one parent over the edge, but ‘whoosh’, another jumps in and provides brief respite, finding themselves explaining that of course it’s not fair that only they have the unicorn face tattoos and in fact sharing them would be much better. Thing Two complains about Thing One and Youngest Thing just wants candyfloss and to go on my shoulders despite the fact she’s the same weight as dark matter itself!

Like rock ‘n’ roll refugees we’ve arrived in droves to hear the news, shake sticks at the sun and dance by moonlight, and to teach ourselves and our children that there’s a knowledge and history that bind us. Often that comes in the form of day glow tights, sparkly jackets, ponchos, glittery Lycra hot pants and fluffy Stetson hats, but you know, it’s no less poignant! I mean, we were all young once. In fact, I still wear a poncho; no one is unhappy in a poncho!

This summer I came to an understanding of the term: ‘It takes a village’.You see families grow together, not just alongside each other, but together, their stories and lives becoming intertwined and when it happens naturally it’s quite something to behold. Watching the cubs have grown-up conversations with adults other than myself and my wife is a proud moment. I too am grateful for the opportunity to talk to other people’s children and see not only the similarities but differences too.

It’s almost like a natural evolutionary trait that community is within us all. I see other families parenting my cubs and I too try to guide other people’s children because it’s not just camping, cooking, dancing and talking that’s communal; it’s parenting. We all chip in, take over where needed, distract if necessary, and teach if we can. Like it’s a common sense of duty.

It filters down too, so I spy the older children adopting the younger and the younger helping the younger still; it’s a beautiful model of life stripped to its simplicity. I hear Bowie in my inner ear singing ‘Let the children lose it, Let the children use it, Let all the children boogie’. It’s an amazing thing to see children dance without inhibition, it’s so natural to them and if festivals encourage that, then I am here for it.

It does get me thinking a lot about how we raise our children and what beliefs we pass on to them. The time out to be together outdoors, sitting around a fire to have complex conversations with them from 18 months to 14 years old about the nature of fire or what their favourite subject at school is interspliced with moments of their own development unfolding as they begin to find farts less funny and history more engaging (let’s not pretend us adults don’t find farts funny though!).

At festivals we come together but it’s not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. It can be wet and muddy or oppressively hot, it can be fun and jovial or handbags at dawn, but in the end it’s all just another chance to (best Chris Martin impression) ‘Look at the stars, Look how they shine for you, And everything you do, Yeah, they were all yellow’.

It’s the songs we sing together, the food we cook, the stories we tell and the time we spend together that tells me I’ve found my tribe. Because it takes a village to raise a child, me included, even if I am wearing sparkling unicorn face tattoos!

Read more about Chris’s adventures at thecoastwalker.com