This cool kid won't panic-buy loo rolls | BBC Radio Solent's Alun Newman

It’s of a 12-year-old boy and a brown bear.

The young lad was out with his mum in the hills of Italy looking for fir cones.

A couple of points.

What a great mum (quality time).

What do you do with collected fir cones?

Those points aside, as she’s filming him walking towards her, a HUGE brown bear appears about 15 metres behind him.

Now, we all know that you must never run from a bear.

I don’t know how we know this but it’s the same as knowing that you have to punch a shark on the nose. We just know.

The boy is filmed looking over his shoulder.

The bear’s up on its hind legs. It’s a monster with a head the size of a boulder.

The boy turns and as calmly as a pensioner on a summer stroll on Southsea Esplanade, walks towards his mum. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t shout, He doesn’t panic. It’s fantastic. He’s fantastic.

He said it was the best day of his life. I took two things away from this incident. That boy will never panic-buy toilet roll.

Secondly, I had no idea that Italy had massive bears, remember that if ever you’re allowed to book a holiday again.

Family walks take intense negotiations

One thing is for sure, and it impacts all parents.

It started with early mankind thousands of years ago and goes right the way up to the present day.

Ninety thousand years ago new parents would be excited that they had started a family.

Then they would begin to realise that everything was about to become some sort of negotiation.

It starts with sleep and food.

Subtly and almost unnoticed, we start to understand clues from the newborn.

They push the boundaries as soon as they start to walk.

Then they progress to the teenage years.

The most unfair thing about early civilisation is, of course, the door hadn’t been invented, so angry children couldn’t slam it.

But I imagine they just made the sound of a slamming door.

Either way, it would have annoyed their parents but often their parents would pretend they hadn’t heard it and would go back to making a hat out of a squirrel.

Back to the present day.

As children get older, it’s perfectly reasonable, even encouraged, that new skills in reasoning and questioning are learned.

In fact we, on an almost daily basis, try to mentor our children to think freely.

We train them to ask questions. Do I want to do this? Will I be safe? Is this peer pressure?

The list of Grange Hill episodes goes on and on.

We all hope for a passionate, intelligent and independent child.

However, there’s a downside. And it’s a big downside.

It becomes the slow tipping of the scales that were once balanced in your favour.

They begin to notice that the worst punishment is turning the wifi off and they know they’ve got two gig of internet data left.

You could take their phone but then you’d need to know the latest password or hide it.

Plus, you need to get it out of their hand and that would be like taking on a 200lb orangutan that had just found a banana (adult males can easily weigh more than 250Ibs, just in case that comes up in a Zoom quiz).

Where’s all this going? It’s leading up to the pain of the family walk.

I meet some families out and about and they stroll past with a spring in their step and I find myself thinking, ‘Wow! They look like they all jumped into the car laughing.’

They seem to me to be thrilled to be in the great outdoors.

They’re chatting to each other, breathing in the fresh air.

When we go out, my children look like they’ve been kidnapped.

To get them out in the first place requires advanced notice of more than 24 hours and details of how long we’re going to be.

They demand signed legal documents assuring all parties that we won’t change our minds and stop at a pub for a game of cards, change the route, or encourage in-car singing.

In fact, the legal document is so long it’s like the terms and conditions on your car insurance.

I recently wondered whether it was worth it. Would my family ever sit around the table laughing about their earlier years? Would they turn to me and say ‘You know dad, I really enjoyed those walks.’

I asked my mum whether the bread you cast on the parental waters ever comes back.

She told me that one of my sisters said something nice about family time. I asked how old my sister was when she gave this positive feedback. Mum said she thinks it was on her 40th birthday!

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