Kids don’t belong at music festivals. Well, not the ones I go to

If the ultimate point of a musical festival is escapism, is it really fair to expect people who paid $500 for a transportive experience to have to tiptoe around your unruly children, asks Darren Levin.

At the start of the 2000s a group of high school friends huddled under a $20 Kmart canvas tent in torrential rain and made a pact.

If they were in Melbourne, no matter the circumstances, there was no excuse for them to miss Meredith Music Festival.

Sixteen years and a combined 10 kids later, I’m the only one that’s kept that pact intact. One of our friends moved to Berlin a year later (and never came back). A couple others went backpacking around the world. The rest had the temerity to start careers, lock themselves into crippling mortgage debt and move on with their lives.

I did that too but I also kept on going to Meredith. Lightning storms. Heatwaves. The birth of three children. An extremely disappointing set from Animal Collective. Nothing could keep me from this transcendental, one-of-a-kind event.

Transcendental experiences just aren’t the same when the fruit of your loins break through your beautiful escapism bubble. Picture: News Corp

Nothing except one of my children coming of age and attending it with me.

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As a rusted-on Meredith Music Festival lifer I can categorically tell you this. Not once have I looked out over its famed Supernatural Amphitheatre and thought: “You know what would really heighten this moment? My kids.”

It’s not that I don’t love them. But there’s a time and place for their love that isn’t my favourite music festival where, for one measly weekend a year, I go to escape them.

Some parents go on golf weekends. Others like to wear ill-fitting spandex and cycle up a mountain. I like to go to music festivals. Don’t @ me.

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There are some parents who feel differently, however. Like 10 Daily writer Wade Shipard, who has brought his young family to Byron’s Splendour In The Grass for the past few years.

Wade writes that a festival’s “esprit de corps” extends to his children, who are regularly “high fived” by punters as if this were a gesture of acceptance and not just a munted 20-year-old confusing your child for his friend.

“Three-year-olds love mosh pits,” he notes. “At their eye-line, it’s not a sea of bobbing heads, it’s a forest of legs to play catch in.”

You want to be screaming for joy at the Meredith Music Festival, not because someone’s little sh...weet child ran over your feet and headbutted you in the groin. Picture: Steve Benn.

While Splendour is an overwhelmingly safe event with a designated area for families, I’m not sure the festival’s core 18-24, triple j-listening demographic wants to play duck duck goose while Dune Rats are singing “Dalai Lama, big banana, marijuana” on the main stage.

People thankfully modify their behaviour around children. But if the ultimate point of a festival is escapism, is it really fair to expect people who paid $500 for a transportive experience to have to tiptoe around your unruly progeny?

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Kids are the ultimate festival disruptors. And it’s not only everyone else’s time you’re ruining — it’s yours as well.

Do you really want to traipse around in a field all day, explaining to a six-year-old why there are so many disused whipped cream canisters all over the ground?

“People just really love to eat waffles at this festival, OK!”

If you MUST give you kids the festival experience, take them to one designed for them, like The Lost Lands festival. Picture: Supplied

Industrial ear muffs don’t just look cute on Instagram — they also protect tiny ears from the driving techno emanating from the stage. What they don’t protect kids from is the relentless grunting coming from the neighbouring tent between the hours of 3am and 6am.

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Yes, it’s good to get “The Talk” out of the way early, but you probably didn’t imagine it happening while some bro is relieving himself on the rented station wagon you’re sheltering your family from sex noises in.

This is not to say kids should never go to festivals. In fact, there are many dedicated family-friendly events such as Lost Lands in Melbourne and Fairgrounds in rural NSW that cater to people who want to share the live music and portaloo experience with their kids.

But festivals without designated family zones are like cafes without high chairs. Don’t take your kids there.

Darren Levin is a RendezView columnist.

Follow him on Twitter: @darren_levin

Originally published as Kids don’t belong at music festivals. Well, not the ones I go to