No, I’m not advocating sending 5 year olds up chimneys to earn a decent wage (yet … give me another 5 weeks of the summer holidays or so), but wanted to share this very funny Guardian article today, where 17 children came into work with their parents – ages ranging from two to fifteen years old.

I can’t say it’s an experiment I’d have contemplated, even back in my office days, but either way it’s an entertaining read if in a slightly “rubber neck car crash” type way. My favourite paragraph has to be this one:

For the first half hour after lunch, things settle into a kind of equilibrium. The children are chatting, drawing, playing boards games, watching DVDs and sending emails. Parents and nonparents are getting on with work in a perfectly unharried fashion. A stranger who walked into the office during this brief lull could be forgiven for imagining that it was like this all the time at G2, that our work-life balance was not a matter of competing priorities, but a perfect, seamless weave of parenting, productivity and glitter.

This is before they start racing office chairs down an inclined corridor.

Hmm, wonder whether I can persuade Akra to take the boys into his office on Monday?