When I Was Growing Up...

**Disclaimer:  If you have ever sent me an email or posted to your Facebook account anything that fits the description of the statements soon to be torn apart, please do not take my criticism too much to heart.  Understand that much of this post is written with a light heart.  Your sharing of such sentiments has not invoked my indignation against you on a personal level.  If I loved you prior to the reading of such sentiments, I love you still.  If we were mere acquaintances, I shall not shun you in the future on the basis of your opinions on these matters.  If however, you offer me a bologna sandwich, most intimate friend or most distant stranger, our friendship is most definitely in jeopardy.**

Every so often it happens.  I receive the email or read the Facebook status full of supposed highlights of my childhood suggesting that today's parents have wandered from the Golden Olden Days of Perfect Parenting into some dark, unnamed realm of awful parenting certain to deprive our children of every good lesson and life-affirming experience imaginable.

It goes something like this:  When I was growing up, I ate bologna, drank soda, played in the dirt, got my butt spanked, had three black and white television channels that went off air at ten o'clock, school started with "The Pledge" and got in trouble at home if I got in trouble at school.  I had a bedtime, rode in back of pickup trucks, recorded songs from the radio on cassette tapes, drank from a hose, rode bikes all day without a helmet, wandered around the neighborhood till dark, said sir and ma'am... and still turned out okay.


One even included something about how kids got calamine lotion instead of Benedryl when they got a bug bite.  As the parent of a child severely allergic to ants, it was all I could do not to shoot back a nasty email informing the sender of the idiocy of risking my child's life for the sake of recapturing a bygone era.

But I get it.  There are plenty of overprotective parents these days, and plenty of permissive parents.  My generation of parents could do much better.  We are too often afraid to let our children get hurt.  Too often we try to shield them from the pain of things within their control and things beyond their control.  We should give them more freedom to explore, to strive, to struggle, to fail and to win.  I get it.  And I agree.

Honestly, though, some of the things on these lists are just stupid.  Bologna and soda?  Really?  You do realize that bologna is disgusting and that neither it nor soda is particularly good for your body?  You've heard that our nation is fatter and unhealthier than ever, haven't you?  Yeah, let's stuff our kids full of bologna and soda.  By golly, that's what our notoriously overweight, unhealthy generation grew up eating and drinking!

Health issues aside, what's so great about bologna?  How am I damaging my children by not giving it to them?  (Actually, I have given it to them, though they rarely eat it nowadays).   I understand the whole "teach your child to eat what's put before him," but how does intentionally serving nasty food make one a great parent?  More importantly, is it effective?  I remember foods I hated growing up.  They still make me gag.  And I don't think I'd be a better parent if I dumped leather-tough pork chops on my kids' plates.  (Especially since there's no way I'd eat it with them!)  Trust me, I serve plenty of things my kids dislike.  I don't, however, make a virtue out of it.  (Partly because I don't like it, either... I'd much rather be a gourmet chef than serve my family some of the atrocities I set on the table!)

As for your three black and white stations...  Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see the merit of primitive television.  Yep, kids watch too much television.  So turn it off.  I'll keep my twenty-some channels and my Netflix.  It so happens there are some really neat, highly educational shows through which I may expose my children to images and concepts they might not be able to grasp as easily, if at all, through the written word alone.  The same goes for iPods and other newfangled electronics by which the young whippersnappers enjoy their music and games.  Technology may be overused, but cassette players and Atari aren't inherently superior to iPods and wii.  (In fact, wii is probably better since it requires players to move more than their phalanges :)).  If you want to complain that parents aren't monitoring the use of electronics, I'm with you.  If you want to smash my wii against a tree, go for it.  I've been doing Pilates using Netflix on wii and I will kick you in the head if you even look at my wii.

And now my favorite (or least favorite) parts of the whole thing...

We rode in the backs of pickup trucks.  Wonderful.  Nowadays, most states have laws requiring children up to certain ages and sizes to be in child safety restraints (a.k.a. car seats and boosters).  Most states have laws requiring adults and children not in car seats to wear a seat belt.  (http://www.iihs.org/laws/childrestraint.aspx)(http://www.iihs.org/laws/safetybeltuse.aspx) Even if buckling up was not law, we've heard about enough accidents in which wearing a seatbelt would have saved someone's life to be fools not to buckle up.

We rode bikes all day without a helmet.  Good for you.  Many areas now have laws mandating helmet use.  (http://www.helmets.org/mandator.htm)  Like seatbelts, the reasons to enforce helmet use extend beyond legalities.  It seems to me that given what we know about head injuries and children's - especially boys' - propensity to attempt things we adults might approach with considerable caution, if at all, I cannot see how failing to require one's children to wear a helmet while biking could possibly be a sign of enlightenment.  I get that some parents are overprotective sticklers for safety who never allow their children to push the limits of their physical capabilities.  That isn't admirable at all, but swinging to the other extreme by sending your children out to ride in defiance of common sense and the law is no better. I hope you don't try to sue your neighbors when your helmetless kid crashes over a stick on their driveway.  (If you do, though, I know a good lawyer!)

But did you catch that thing about the law?  Wearing bike helmets and using safety restraints are the LAW.  I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, my mama taught me to obey the law.  So which is it?  Did your parents teach you to obey the law, or are you going to keep trying to throw off your helmet and squirm out of your seat belt?  And are you really encouraging your children to do so?  Are you practicing what you preach or strapping your most precious children into their car seats?  Can't have it both ways, folks...

We wandered around the neighborhood till dark.  Your parents probably knew everyone in the neighborhood, too, or at least enough of them to know that someone would be looking out for you.  Either that, or your parents didn't know all the crazy things that went on in your neighborhood.

In my early elementary years, we lived a block from my cousin and two blocks from my grandparents.  On one corner lived a lady who had watched my father run the streets of that same neighborhood.  We wandered freely, and yes, someone once called my parents when I ran my bike into their car.

Then we moved to Florida.

It may defeat my whole argument to confess that, to my knowledge, nothing really bad ever happened to my sisters or me in the course of our neighborhood wanderings.  My most frightening encounter occurred the evening a woman grabbed my arm and demanded all my money as I walked my dog, who in a freak breach of character failed to growl, snarl, and bite the woman.  (Those of you who remember Samson and were subjected to his territorial defenses can marvel at that one...)  The woman, much to my relief, believed my honest protests of empty pockets and sent me on my junior high way.  That was the worst that happened to me, but certainly not the worst that could have happened.  In retrospect, I'm convinced my sisters and I saw a few drug deals go down and enjoyed the hospitality of child molesters. I have no proof of either, but conversations with my Wise and Wonderful Sister (that's your proper name now, my dear!) have at least confirmed that many things from the neighborhood of our youth were a little sketchy, sketchier than we realized at the time.  Our wanderings led us into situations that could have been disastrous, situations from which I prefer to protect my children.

We usually traveled in a group of three or more, my sisters and I and our friends.  Perhaps ideas of "safety in numbers" gave my parents and us courage to wander along the wooded canals surrounding our neighborhood.  Perhaps a mere partial knowledge of where we were going and the people with whom we associated shielded them from worries over our safety.  Perhaps they were products of a different era from the one in which we grew up, an era of "Mayberry" and "Leave It to Beaver" instead of "Murder She Wrote" and "Unsolved Mysteries."

I don't think this subtle change in circumstances has received enough attention in the discussion of "parents these days," but this is the point at which I stop laughing.  You can tease me for buying ham instead of bologna, roll your eyes at my child's iPod, and call me uptight when I should "HELMET!" from my kitchen window.  When it comes to guarding against people who might harm my children, though, I have a hard time shrugging off ridicule.  From an early age, our parents and schoolteachers taught us not to talk to strangers and to have our parents check all of our Halloween candy before eating any of it.  You never knew what kind neighbor might insert a razor blade into a juicy red apple.   Our milk cartons displayed pictures of children just like us who never came home from school.  Through widely reported events including Catholic Church and Boys Scout scandals and through shows like "Law & Order" and "Dateline", the current generation of parents learned that perpetrators of heinous crimes against children are often those closest to them, those considered most trustworthy.  We've seen crime after crime reported and reenacted on the news, on prime time crime dramas and real life mysteries, and now on the internet. You might even say - and I say this tongue-in-cheek and without ill will toward our parents or our culture - that we were raised to be fearful and overprotective.  Now, from peers, for every accident a child has, his parents hear, "Oh, did you hear about (insert similar but much more severe accident that happened to someone else)?" The worst case scenario is ever before our eyes, and has been so since we were young.  It's no wonder we're paranoid.

We are paranoid, on the whole, and must resist the urge to overprotect.  We must judge carefully between valid concerns and exaggerated fears.  We must trust God to protect our children, our children to use common sense, and our loved ones not to create the next horrifying news report.  But we should not be mocked when we are aware of potential danger and take reasonable steps to guard against tragedy.  When I strap a helmet onto my child, when I buckle my toddler into his car seat, when I glance out my kitchen every few minutes to make sure my children are still in the backyard, when my eyes scan the playground, and when I do all the little things a watchful mother does...  I neither need nor deserve ridicule.  My children are my responsibility.  I have learned, through experience and ever-sensationalized media, that anything can happen in an instant.  And obeying the law isn't the only thing my mama taught me.  She also taught me to love my family and to think about what I'm doing.  So I won't apologize to those who accuse me of being overprotective.  I will admit that I cannot protect them from everything and ask God for the courage not to attempt to do so and the faith to believe that He will guard them from the true dangers they will face, many of which will elude the scope of my paranoia.  But I will not apologize for setting limits and watching my children even as they play within those limits.  I will not apologize for protecting them to the extent that I am able to do so, to the extent that I have the responsibility to do so.

If you have a problem with that, go buy some bologna.