If you manage to get to the bottom of this article without breaking off to locate a lost frisbee or build a den for your children, congratulations. It's possible you're already a fan of benign neglect - the concept of doing parenting but not, crucially, doing too much. Benign neglect is about being around without actually being available. It's about redressing the balance of family life, where every member is periodically entitled to the last Magnum in the freezer.

The emphasis is on the benign bit, mind you, not the neglect. It's the difference between a benign tumour and a malignant one. And that's a big difference. No one is advocating serious neglect, here. Meet the needs of your offspring, but don't pander to their every whim. Feed, clothe and love them, yes, just don't go to Thorpe Park (for the fifth time) on Sunday when you'd rather watch the Wimbledon Final.

In reality, most of us are finding lost frisbees when we'd sooner be reading the paper. We trolley-dash round Sainsbury's at midnight to free up our weekends for strategically planned outings to soft play places where the children will have fun and be safe while we get bored and drink rubbish coffee and wonder where our lives have gone. We bankrupt ourselves buying truckloads of pointless plastic to keep them happy, ferry them to football and swimming and music lessons, play with them, draw with them, read with them, bake with them… But are we doing too much?

Maybe we should take some tips from our own parents. Seventies parents didn't have kids to place them at the centre of their universe, they had them because that's what you did - and then you got on with Artexing the living room ceiling or whipping up some Angel Delight. You didn't try to work and then get a nutritious meal on the table. Why would you, when Findus had invented the Crispy Pancake and they were on offer at Bejam? It was still possible to go the pub on a Saturday lunchtime - the kids could easily amuse themselves for two hours in a locked car with a Coke and a packet of Golden Wonder. And in an era where a man walking down the street was just a man, and probably not a paedophile, you could happily turf them outside to make their own fun.

Benign neglect has significant benefits - for the whole family! You will feel less stressed and resentful. Your child will become more independent. It's a simple concept, this idea of being mildly unresponsive to our offspring, so why do we struggle with it? Perhaps it's because society has finally got the message that children matter and shouldn't be shoved up chimneys. As a result, we're now taking parenting very seriously. We've got a library of manuals, we've SkyPlused Supernanny and we have a gazillion child-oriented attractions within a 20-minute drive in which to spend our disposable income.

Another cause for our reticence is the fear of being judged. How can you look other conscientious middle-class parents in the eye when you know your kid was watching Bratz for two hours because you forgot to take her to Funky Flamenco? And above all, we're scared of screwing it up. Fear is a useful emotion, of course, which keeps us striving for the best for our kids, but it does rather put us on the back foot when it comes to decisive, confident parenting.

But is benign neglect really that bad? It's not about introducing a dangerous regime, after all. It's just about interweaving a few adult-centric rituals into your family life. Saturdays at 10.30 could be 'coffee time', when you drink coffee and the kids understand they need to go and play. And then you could add 'lunch time', when you eat lunch and they understand they need to go and play. And then there's 'afternoon tea time', when you... all right, you get the idea. We're not talking Victorian-style seen-and-not-heard neglect here, but sometimes, a little bit of talk-to-the-hand-cos-the-mum-is-drinking-coffee might be useful.

Encourage your children to embrace the mundane. For every three weekend jollies you lay before them like a cloth of jewels, there should be a sprinkling of boring but essential activities, too. Take them to the tip, to B&Q, to the supermarket. Make them queue in the Post Office with you. These chores shouldn't take place in some parallel child-free universe, otherwise your offspring will grow up thinking life is just one long visit to National Trust castles and over-priced theme parks. No. Forget the frisbee and pour yourself another coffee. Put your parental needs back on the agenda and tell Monkey World what it can do with its bananas.

BOX ON GETTING THE BALANCE RIGHT

Refusing to put a plaster on invisible graze on child's ankle caused by passing feather - good.
Telling them to 'brace up' when they have skinned both knees and received concussion from falling off the climbing frame - not good.
Doing oven chips because you can't be bothered to cook - good.
Buying them kebab and chips because you can't be bothered to cook - not good.
Encouraging them to swap Ben 10 for Masterchef at 6.30pm - good.
Letting them watch CSI with you at 10.30pm - not good.