Me? I have been looking forward to a summer with some time alone. Having the kids underfoot and within earshot for two months only makes us all miserable and anxious for school to start up again.
I don't worry about sending them out to explore. They are careful kids and they look out for one another but they are more likely to run into a coyote than a bunch of local kids playing soccer.
The sound of skipping ropes, street hockey and a rousing game of Champ are as rare as the sound of good manners. Families have fewer kids these days and those they do have are anxiously waiting at the door for Mom to drive them to a play date or day camp.
Mine are 9 and 7 now and we have done our best to prepare them for this summer, one without Mom in tow. We’ve let them talk to enough strangers over the years to develop, we hope, a keen sense of what is "normal" and what is not. We have met lots of folks in the community, my kids know where they live which ones are home during the day should they help. They know our phone number, how to tell time and where the parks are.
I sent them out last week and told them if they weren’t back by 2:00 I’d come looking for them. That gave them 90 minutes out in the Big Wide World to walk a route they know, play at a park, and if they were feeling brave, make their way down the hill to the ravine where they may or may not encounter a gathering of teens, ant hills, bees and water any of which would elicit a reaction somewhere between tentative and down right freaked out. Reactions I encourage they have without me nearby.
I posted a quick note on Facebook about their adventures and there were a few replies from friends. It was interesting to note that the women my age would allow their kids to roam free while the younger moms said they wouldn’t or couldn’t do it. I understand that, the younger parents likely didn’t have free run of the streets as kids either when the Culture of Fear was beginning to permeate even the safest suburban communities.
I was born in 1961 and grew up in a time many of us older folks look back on as being idyllic. Kids went out all day admonished not take candy from a stranger and to be home before the street lights came on. That was it. The sun wasn’t a burning death ball yet and most of us had sustained enough head injuries and sprained limbs to make us impervious to worse.
It was a time when we were raised by all parents, all adults in fact. If we were doing something dangerous or wrong someone would yell at us to “Knock it off or I’ll call your mother or the cops!” without worrying about being labeled abusive.
I navigated my neighbourhood to be around the Littles’ house at lunch where Mrs Little would make cauldrons of KD, a forbidden food at my house. The Callaghans had Oreos, the Young’s had a colour TV, the Dubuque’s had a pool and most kids where welcome at most homes almost anytime. As I got older the world got bigger and I went from our block out into the woods where we swung on ropes over the creak, built forts and cleaned wounds with mud.
I was home for supper and ate like I was going to the electric chair, used SNAP to scrub clean, and fell into bed to sleep like the dead. I have to believe that the world my kids live in today is no more perilous than the one I grew up in.
It’s been a good. They have been out everyday and haven't mentioned word one about being bored, they are covered with bites and bumps, bruises and scabs. Their hair smells like chlorine, dirt and bug spray and they have been staying up late and sleeping in. They come home with stories, rocks and branches feeling proud, independent and worldly.
Everyday they go out with more confidence and come home with big plans for tomorrow. It’s a great thing to watch. It's just too bad there aren't more kids out there to play with.
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Bill Bryson's memoir entitled The Life & Times of The Thunderbolt Kid is a wonderful read chronicling Bryson's years growing up in the 50's in an America teeming with baby boomers. It's a wonderful peek into a time when kids were free to get into all kinds of trouble.
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