(story by Mir, from Woulda Coulda Shoulda)
I have two comforting mantras as a parent, and I use either or both as necessary to keep me calm and away from the sure conviction that my children are going to end up as hobos, convicts, or otherwise as if their mama didn't raise them right. They are:
1) This too shall pass,
and
2) Children are resilient.
I'm a worrier. It's a gift. (A gift I have often tried to return, but I can't seem to find the receipt.) When my babies are struggling, I struggle. When they hurt, I hurt. And nowadays—with one teen and one nearly-teen—they have the audacity to be autonomous beings with problems I can't readily fix. Who authorized that?? Not me, surely.
The bizarre corollary to this particular angst is that, while I agonize over true challenges my kids face, they are… hmmm. How shall I put this? How about like this: My children are (like most kids in their generation of similar middle-income families) rather soft. The things which they regard as tragedies are often matters which cause me to laugh and laugh and then tell them to get off my lawn. My kids' idea of oppression is when I tell them to put away their laundry. Their idea of a long walk is when they have to go a couple of blocks without benefit of a parent to chauffeur them.
This puts me in the interesting position of both having helicopter-y tendencies (I admit it!) and simultaneously feeling like the very best solution to their discontents is for me to assure them that they can figure it out themselves.
It's an odd place to find myself, especially when you consider that half the time, I don't feel old enough to be anyone's parent at all, much less parent to a couple of kids who don't have that many more years left to live at home.
I know a lot of other parents who feel this same sort of dichotomy. We get into the various verbal battles of It Was Different When We Were Kids and Why I Was Doing So Much More At Their Age and so on. Recently a friend commented to me that, "When we were their age, the stuff that's a big deal now flew completely under the radar."
This reminded me of a long-ago memory that both horrified me and made me laugh: I had a rather rocky journey through middle school. I was insecure, unhappy, and prone to spinning stories that spoke to emotional truths rather than actual ones. (This is a kind way of saying that I was a pathological liar because it amused me.) (And before anyone points out the obvious; yes, blogging isn't all that different, except that I'm a lot happier now and I try really hard to be clear about when I'm making stuff up. Ahem.) In 6th grade I had an English teacher who seemed to believe I personally hung the moon and made the sun shine. Whatever I wrote, she loved it. I lapped up her praise like it was cream and I was a hungry kitten.
For one assignment—who knows what the actual description was, I can't remember—I wrote a long story about a girl who was my age, and looked a lot like me, and loved musical theater (just like me), and who was very unhappy at home (like me), and who ended up auditioning for "Annie" on Broadway (not at all like me). Things at home got pretty bad for my protagonist, so she overdosed on the contents of her mother's medicine cabinet. She lived, and it turned out that she'd gotten the part on Broadway, and so the story had a pretty happy ending.
I got an A+, along with multiple gushing comments about my wonderful imagination.
Now. Imagine an 11-year-old turns that story in to a public school classroom today. Seriously, imagine the shit-storm that would rain down on a 6th grader who included such a detailed account of a suicide attempt in an assigned piece of creative writing. The teacher would notify the principal; the school would call the parents; quite possibly there would be mandated counseling. And I'm not saying any of that is wrong or bad, but I am saying that back then, none of that happened, even though anyone who was paying even a little bit of attention should've seen my story as alarming, at the very least.
But nothing like that happened, and I was still unhappy, but I was a little happier because my teacher liked my writing. And, of course, I lived.
When I find myself overwhelmed by the potential issues my kids face, nowadays, I remind myself: We had it harder, maybe. Or maybe we didn't; maybe it's harder for today's kids to feel like they're always under the microscope. Growing up is hard, period. Always. I can't fix everything for them, just like no one fixed some of the hard stuff for me. Somehow, most of us manage to muddle through.
All I can do is remind my kids that I love them. And that my childhood was much worse than theirs. And that they still need to go put away their laundry.
Can you think of something that happened when you were a kid that positively horrifies you now, in retrospect? Share your resilience!
(read more Mir here)
I remember getting places on foot (of all things!). I had a few friends in the neighborhood and a few friends across town and we all got together by walking there (two or three miles). The walking was half the fun as it gave us a chance to catch up from the time we spent apart dropping off our books from school. Honestly, after we got together with our friends, we kept on walking and talking. But walking out there in the world means you are sharing the space with every degenerate on foot or in cars and I clearly remember being propositioned and/or “offered rides” by teenage boys and even grown men. That is freaking scary to me now. We always ignored anyone talking directly to us and secretly enjoying cat calls if the boys were cute and a few times, changing direction and making a plan if we got creeped out by someone. For the record, we we just girls walking and talking and getting someplace. We weren’t little hoochies in short skirts looking for trouble. So scary that we wouldn’t have had to look at all.
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Whoops. I had a point. I forgot to make it. Part of me thinks my kids miss out on some important life lessons about being wary and taking care of themselves (as well as the exercise of the walking and the friendship building of the HOURS of yakking without a parent hovering nearby). Then I kick myself in the ass and ask myself if I am crazy. It isn’t as though we protected ourselves, mostly it was dumb luck and sticking to regularly trafficked streets that kept us safe.
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Yeah, I remember this aspect of childhood well. Walking EVERYWHERE. I too, was propositioned by strange guys in cars at times too. One guy even followed me home, once, and came and knocked on the door because he knew I was alone. I didn’t answer it, he left, and I never saw him again.
I never said anything, either. I think back then we kept a lot more stuff like that to ourselves.
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My mum was raised in a gated community – a REALLY gated community, a top-secret town that you couldn’t get into without a badge. She has no idea about some really basic things, such as what is or is not a safe thing to let – or insist that – your kid do.
My sister and I were encouraged to play in the scrub forest area around the river, the area that was littered with needles and bottles and cans and was reasonably well populated with some veeeeery interesting homeless men. We went once (alone), age 8 and 6 and never, never ever went again even though my mum couldn’t imagine why not.
As a high-schooler she thought it was a great idea to have me walk from my high-school to my house – five miles, through one of the rougher parts of town. She didn’t find out for years that I would beg piteously for rides home every day, even staying after for hours if the kind friend had a rehearsal or practice or something. Her response when I said I didn’t feel comfortable walking (or riding the city bus – another horror)? ‘well, I never have any problem!’ Yes mum, I’m sixteen, you’re nearly fifty. It’s totally analogous!
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I think we’ll all have lack-of-supervision stories! ;-D So, instead:
My parents couldn’t deal with my younger sister (looking back, she had/has to be an undiagnosed Aspie). So they farmed her out to my dad’s parents, who weren’t very snuggly-wuggly types at all, for a few years.
We didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in retrospect, how horrible! It’s amazing that she is a happy, married adult who works as a pilot for a small airline, now.
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I was a latch key kid starting in the fourth or fifth grade. That phrase alone takes me back. Do they even still use that term?
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It’s funny. I don’t hear the term anymore, but it’s the first we use when describing ourselves (if we were one).
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Kids don’t use that term today because today it’s illegal. Heh.
I was a latchkey kid from about 3rd grade (age 8). I walked half a mile to the bus stop, too, and home from there. Last year when my son was in 5th grade (and 11) I had his bus driver—who dropped him at the end of the driveway—tell me she was NOT ALLOWED to leave him if I wasn’t home, so I needed to either be outside or leave the garage open so she knew I was home. Little different!
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I know was under the age of 9 when my father asked me to ride my bike to the drugstore and buy him a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t do it often, which is why I remember it. (We moved around a lot so until I was 10, I know how old I was by where we lived.) The druggist didn’t even blink when I said my dad wanted some Pall Mall reds. No big deal.
And Mir, thank you. I needed to hear this today, that our children WILL survive. All the angst will someday be swept away. Teenage angst is normal.
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Also a latch key kid here…at a very young age. I think of the things I was able to do before I was 10 (like cook, and decent at laundry) that my kids now (at 15, 12, and
have NEVER even attempted, I sometimes feel that it is a disadvantage for them that I do so much.
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I’m with you, I did my own laundry, cooking, etc. by their ages… and part of me wants them to know how, and part of me is glad they don’t NEED to know how. It’s such a hard balance to strike.
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What’s up with the cool smiley face?? That was supposed to be the number “eight”. LOL!
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It’s how you typed the eight the closed the parentheses. 8 then ) equals 8). Need to leave a space or the editor sees it as an emoticon. The 8 is the sunglasses, the ) the smile…
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A guy attacked me with a knife in high school, I pushed him away and cut myself. Not only the teachers didn’t react, my classmates didn’t either. It was bizarro world, that bystander effect thing. I lived! Later I discovered that the guy probably liked me but didn’t know how to approach me. Way to go, dude. Way to go. We were civil acquaintances for the rest of high school, in fact. :/
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Whoa. Nothing says puppy love like threatening to stab someone!
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There was a guy in my high school who got caught with Chinese throwing stars and suspended. First of all, he’d probably be in the psych ward now. Second of all, I think “Chinese throwing stars” is an un-pc term now. Third of all, our principal took us to the gun store* so he could run errands while I was in driver’s ed so…ya know. It’s all relative I guess.
*See also why I was terrified to drive and didn’t get my license until I was 18 and my parents ponied up for private lessons.
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When I was in elementary school, probably about 8, my mother would have me ride the city bus from our suburb into the big city with my sister in tow who was probably 5. We rode the bus probably 6 miles for a good 30-40 minutes. Now my babysitter put us on the bus and my grandmother met us at the stop we got off. But one time we got off at the wrong stop and I had to figure out how to get us where we needed to be. Eventually I found a pay phone and called my grandmother who told me which bus to get on but it was scary. I can’t believe my mom let me do this. My daughter is 10 and I can’t imagine putting her in that situation.
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Lucinda, this is where we are now, trying to decide if our 11 yr old is ready for the bus. Her school is only 20 minutes away by car but by bus it’s nearly double that. And she doesn’t pay attention well so I can only imagine her winding up across town, looking up from her book wondering where she is. I see kids 8 and younger on the bus and I do wonder if it’s a necessity that they travel alone. At the same time, I remember being fully self sufficient on our bus and train system by 8. I cannot imagine my 8 yr old on the train alone, though. The bus, maybe, if it was a short ride. Should we lean more into their resiliency? I’m not sure.
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Oh, it’s a wonder I’m still here given the things I was allowed to do when I was a kid (and the things I would have been grounded for if anyone had found out). But I lived and I learned. It’s analagous to learning to ride a bike–sure, Mom or Dad holds on while you’re wobbly, but once you achieve balance and are ready to zoom down the sidewalk it would be silly for them to keep holding on “just in case” you might start to wobble and fall. Skinned knees, broken hearts, hurt feelings, friend-betrayals, mean kids, are all part of growing up and it’s how we learn to regain our balance when life gets wobbly.
Speaking of snow and sheltered kids: I was just out shoveling the walkways and wondering “shouldn’t there be roaming bands of tweens and teens offering to do this for some extra cash?” Parents, I need your children to be out there!
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I wish my kids had the summers I had where we went outside at daybreak and didn’t venture back in (unless we needed food at some random point in the day from a different person’s house each day) until nightfall. Outside all day. Playing. Tag. Red light, green light. Hot potato. Riding bikes. Jumping rope. Going to the park. I feel like they’re missing out because although they go outside, it’s pretty much in our yard or at the park, always supervised.
When I was in 6th or 7th grade my neighbor started flirting with me (well, now I know he’d ALWAYS flirted with me; I was just too young to know that’s what it was). He was in his late 20s by then. Sometimes he’d drive me to work once I was in 10th grade and once he put his hand on my inner thigh. Of course by then I KNEW. Of the comments he’d make to me in front of my mother, I can’t imagine any she deemed appropriate. Yet, she never said anything. It wasn’t until I came out of the house with a too-short skirt on that she went ballistic. He was damn near salivating. All I could think was um, he’s been nasty all this time, lady, where’ve you been? I think today he’d be seen as a pedophile for sure.
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Ack, this story made me cringe for you. I’m so sorry!
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Arneyba’s first paragraph is pretty much what I was gonna say. Also, riding our bikes to the 7-Eleven for 2-cent candy and Slurpees. That was a good mile away and we were all of 8?
We’d leave the house in the morning and didn’t have to be home until the street lights came on. I can’t imagine letting my nieces do that nowadays.
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Arnebya. Sorry I spelled that wrong.
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I was just talking with a friend about this sort of thing.. as my child gets set to go to kindergarten next fall. When I was in kindergarten.. i WALKED to school; about a mile or 20 minutes time. mostly with other kids none older than maybe 8. the standing rule was… i looked in the parking lot at school and if mom’s car was there.. i got a ride. if not, i walked home. once I was good with a bike, i rode to school. Thought nothing of any of it. Wouldnt let my son do it… NOONE does that nowadays…. (and you’d have CPS on your ass if you did, I’m sure) yes I get that there are many odd and evil types out there.. but really… more than back in the day? Was it just as dangerous and people just let it ride?
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There’s a lot of research out there now about this myth of how the world is “more dangerous” now. In fact, kidnappings and such aren’t more plentiful, but our fear of them certainly is. Interesting.
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I can’t help but wonder, though, if there would be more kidnappings today if we parents weren’t so vigilant.
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Statistically it is safer today. People just see Nancy Grace or other people who make a living trying to convince people that the world is unsafe hyping up kidnappings and think the world is unsafe. Kidnappings are news because they are uncommon.
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And it seems like the really big bad stories always involve a parent, step-parent or someone else closely related. I’m thinking specifically of Zahra Baker and Caylee Anthony.
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I can’t imagine my 10-year-old grandson (or any 10-year-old, for that matter) using a power mower to take care of his yard, and yet I was cutting our grass and several neighbors’ lawns as well when I was his age. I’m pretty sure power mowers didn’t have a lot of safety features back in the early ’60s. My little brother had a paper route and I guess I was jealous that he was making all that money and I wasn’t. I started babysitting when I was 11 … again, I can’t imagine asking a 21st-century 11-year-old to care for toddlers.
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I try to be a Free Range Parent as much as possible. Statistically our kids are far safer today than we were at their ages, yet we have a trend of supervising the independence right out of them. I’ve learned a bunch from the website Free Range Kids http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ and I highly recommend it to all of you.
This is from the website:
“We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence.
Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned.
So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.”
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I wrote a story in 5th grade, in the mid ’80s. A little boy dies, goes to heaven, asks God “What’s the point?” and finds out (through visiting living people who are struggling and receive help from others) that it’s so we can learn to care for each other. My parents had to go in to see the principal, and I had to have counseling sessions with our minister. So the roots of helicoptering are there. I remember being a bit incensed.
However, I did walk home from school every day to an empty house where my younger brother and I would warm up frozen pizzas and watch TV for a couple of hours until my parents got home.
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I started staying home alone when I was about 8 or 9, and staying home alone with my little sister who was 5 years younger than me not long after that. We did SO MUCH DANGEROUS STUFF that my mom never found out about (we liked to deep fry things and play with fire) that I can’t even imagine letting my own kids stay home alone, EVER.
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I remember as a kid my parents taking us to department store warehouse sales that started at something like 6 am. They would drop us off at the TVs to watch cartoons and come back for us an hour or two later. We were probably 3&6 to 5&8. We were never the only kids dropped at the TVs either. I can’t imagine doing that now – I’m sure you’d get CPS called on you.
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We had a gas stove and the pilot light didn’t work. For as long as I can remember, we kept a box of matches on the counter, and to light the stove, we’d light a match, turn the dial for the burner, and light the gas (like lighting up a camping stove). I must have started doing this when I was about 8, because I remember making my own box of Kraft dinner around that time. As I got older, my teenage friends would look in horror whenever I lit the stove. I have a gas stove now (with a fully functioning pilot light) and my kids (6 and 9 YO) look in fear every time the pilot light “clicks clicks clicks” before the burner lights up. I wonder how I ever managed….lol!
And yes, I was a latch-key kid from around 8 YO too. But I never had a key – we just left the door unlocked (and yes, we lived in a big city)!
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I spent summer holidays with my grandmother, about a 8-hour bus trip away. I think I was 7 the first time I did the trip alone.
We had to get off the bus every few hours for the loo and food and drink. I still remember the horrible feeling of getting to the head of a long queue, looking up at the station clock and realising my bus was leaving 2 minutes earlier. I ran. One of the passengers said “I was wondering where you were” and I guess the driver wouldn’t have gone without me, but I was still freaked.
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My kids are spoiled with attention. Period. My mother was lazy and a drunk. She never did anything with us. When my brother and sister moved out, she bought me a big t.v. and made me have an after-school curfew. I never did anything. Now, I do everything with my boys. Shopping. Sleeding. Movie night. I show them how to cook and do crafts. I never want them to feel unwanted. But, also, they don’t know how good they have it. They always want more from me and I feel so guilty when I can’t give my all. This post was great. Puts a lot of things into perspective.
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Just yesterday I was telling my 5 & 8 yo, how I walked to school by myself (w/neighbor kids) a mile & a half each way. Every day. My brother was in kinder & walked with us too (I was 8 by that time.) We live less than 2 blocks from our school & there’s no way I’d let them walk alone. There’s maybe a handful of kids in 5th who walk to school alone & my kids often ask about it. In my defense, a year ago we had 4 known attempted abductions in our neighborhood, in like a 4 month period. Yeah FOUR. (Only 1 made the news, bc it was a woman trying to abduct.) We live in a neighborhood w/a a lot of SAHM/D & very involved parent base at school. You drive a mile north & you’re in a neighborhood of duplexes & apartments; IOW, income is lower & typically both parents are working. Almost all the kids at that school are walking to & from alone. I wonder why our kids seem to be such targets, or if we just don’t know about the attempts in that neighborhood.
I lament the fact that my kids don’t know about doorbell ditch or TPing houses or crank phone calls bc they always have some level of parent supervision. They have no time w/just other kids to come up w/bad ideas & experiment. (Tho maybe that’s not all bad.) We do allow a lot more playtime then many places bc of the SAH aspect, we just have front porches, where the parents hang (and drink wine) while “supervising.” On the plus side, we know all our neighbors and when a kid does not have a parent, there is a quick response to find out why, for that child. I know that the village would be quick to protect my child in my absence, so there’s that.
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Oh, how I can relate! Like Kelly, my mother was also lazy and drunk. She never did anything with my brother and me–she would just lie in her bed reading Georgette Heyer historical romance novels and drinking wine. My dad was great, but he was a musician and was basically never home when my brother and I were because he worked at night and slept when we were at school. I recall being as young as 5 years old and being allowed to walk 3 blocks to a local park and I just had to be home before dark. When I learned to ride a bike, I rode EVERYWHERE! I hung out at the local arcade, the local convenience store, pet shop, etc. etc. etc. My mom had NO IDEA where I was, nor did she care.
Being lazy and often drunk, my mom would never drive us ANYWHERE. Girl Scout meeting 2 miles away? Either walk or ask someone else’s mom in the troop to come pick you up. One time my dad dropped my brother, a friend of mine and me off at a local theater to see a movie. But then my mom refused to come pick us up when the movie was over. So we had to walk home in the dark and it was probably 4 miles. We’re 42 and 43, respectively, now, but my friend still reminds me of this not so excellent adventure sometimes!
I would NEVER EVER EVER let my kids go riding around by themselves NOW, even though they are 13 and almost 10. And I would certainly not expect them to walk home 4 miles in the dark! Sometimes I feel bad that they don’t have much freedom to roam, but these days you can never be too careful. Just this past month there were 3 attempted child abductions and all three of the kids are students at my kids schools. Times have certainly changed. *sigh*
P.S.- I was always one of the taller and more developed girls, so I remember being propositioned and whistled at when I was as young as 5th grade!
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