“Let’s go to the park!” chant the children on Good Friday morning.

Good enough idea if we can go to the park with the outside restaurant.  Should be fairly painless.

• Order food.
• Kids don’t eat food.
• Wind blows food away.
• Kids run away.

Grabbing backpack, wrapping chicken nuggets in napkin, toting water bottles, I race behind the children – just in time to catch the youngest child before he falls from a tree.

Dumping out their $2.50 drinks the kids leave the tree and head for the creek to catch minnows in their cups. Grabbing backpack, water bottles and cold, greasy chicken nuggets, I trail behind the motivated crew.

Settling on the rocks I begin making a third 30-second camp when I hear, “Mom, let’s go back to the restaurant for another cup.” 

Unlike the other mommies who have packed nets for their children and seem happy to talk in sweet high-pitched voices saying, “Look at the minnows swim. How many minnows do you see? What do you think minnows eat?” I say, “Listen to me. I’m not dragging this shit one more place. And, eat this chicken because I’m not feeding you again until dinner!”  Another mother whose kid is wearing Wellies and carrying appropriate plastic kid fishing gear looks at me like I’m Courtney Love or Anna Nicole Smith.

When I was a kid (just stop and laugh at that trite line) I left my house in the morning and showed up again when the sun went down.  My days were filled with activities like affixing Styrofoam to cardboard boxes and trying to float down a creek; or crawling through a culvert until the stink got to be too much to endure; or finding some cows in a field and trying to climb on their backs – that project took a full day.

My point, and it’s obviously not a new one, is that kids these days are so molly-coddled that it’s hard to think they will be anything other than a pack of pussies when they grow up.

Earlier in the morning I took the children with me to a quick business meeting at a coffee shop. My son told me he needed to go to the bathroom. Fine. Thanks for telling me.  The woman with whom I was meeting said, “You let your children go to the bathroom by themselves? I’m scared my children will get abducted.”

Sitting on the rock, lost in thought about being too lenient a parent, I see my tough girl crying on the other side of the creek.  Unusual. The kids had been rolling down a hill and she had thrown body over hand and yanked her thumb enough to produce a bit of swelling.  Good thing we were playing next to a hospital.  Three hours later and probably a thousand dollars worth of medical attention, my daughter sports a professionally wrapped hand and thumb. 

In 1976 while holding onto a rope tied to my cousin’s friend’s car, I skateboarded up, then down a steep hill ending with a nasty fall that at a minimum sprained my wrist if not broke it. Not only did I never see a doctor, I didn’t even tell my parents. Furthermore, to my recollection, nobody noticed I didn’t use my right hand for several weeks.

Ah, the good ‘ol days of reasonable insurance rates.  Wonder why I didn’t have the sense to throw some ice on my daughter’s hand, then wrap a popsicle stick to hold it straight. That’s all the emergency room did. Somehow parents have lost focus…and I might be leading the pack.

P.S. That is a really old picture of my daughter playing by a creek.  She wouldn't be caught dead with a bow in her hair.

Comments

[FENICLE]

That place looks like a cool place to go play. Your kids remind me of my son...all the questions...

[all things bd]

I'm currently grappling with letting my girls ride around on bikes outside without me. I am in a GREAT neighborhood here in Austin, and can hear them outside and have checked to make sure there are no sex offenders in the area. Still, I panic after a few minutes of silence and run out to check.

I too used to be gone all day, only coming in when the street lights came on. Those were the days.

[hokgardner]

I was just in upstate NY for my grandmother's memorial service, and my dad and his brothers were talking about their childhoods, when they went outside in the morning and came back when my grandmother clanged the dinner bell. I did much the same when I stayed at my grandparents' house as a child - I'd be stomping around in the woods and paddling around the pond in the old rowboat and wandering through pastures until I heard the 5 o'clock chimes at the college cross the street.

It's a shame that my kids won't have the same opportunities, mainly because there aren't a lot of places where you can just let them roam free anymore.

Sorry to hear about your daughter's thumb. I hope it doesn't slow her down much.

[Shellie]

Times they are changing. Not always for the good. Unfortunately, we can't give our kids as much freedom as we had, but we can sure give them as much as possible and try to stop second guessing every single second of parenthood :)