The Pluses of Parental Neglect
Except that Dickerson's story is mostly about how much fun he and his older brother had being on their own.
"We were raising ourselves, and the house was our fort, a fantasy world out of a children’s book like 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' Parents absent, weaponry handy...When firecrackers weren’t available, we attacked each other with pennies and marbles and clumps of Crisco, which made brilliant greasy asterisks when you missed and hit the wall. We plotted in a two-room dry meat locker lined with horror-film hooks in the basement, and played hide-and-seek under the attic eaves in a nest of built-in cabinets that offered endless spaces where even bloodhounds would never find you....It's the kind of freedom that most kids today don't enjoy--and most parents today would shudder at the thought of kids unsupervised for hours. How dangerous! Who knows what could happen!
"When our cut and thrust carried us over into the house’s most formal rooms we learned to cover our tracks. We glued together small Chinese bowls we’d smashed and scrubbed away water stains on coffee tables with mayonnaise and ashes. I spent a night putting plastic wood into the pockmarks I left in a door when I threw a fistful of pennies and my brother was quick enough to close it to protect himself.
"When we’d had enough of the house, there were abandoned outbuildings ripe for terror, discovery and puncture wounds, including a broken-down collection of pool houses, a deep, empty fountain and a musty one-room Cape Cod that had once been a dog kennel. My brother and I ventured out armed, first with bow and arrow and later with BB guns and .22 rifles."
I am still debating whether to let my very responsible fifth grader walk the 15 minute walk into our sleepy little suburban town with her friend. She hasn't yet gone to even a movie with a friend--except if a parent is chaperoning.
Reading Dickerson's essay reminded me of what kids are losing in all of this "supervision" and involvement by parents. Yes, they are more likely to be safe, and we, as parents, get to enjoy our kids a little bit longer. But they lose the freedom of getting lost in their imagination, which, yes, means getting some bumps and bruises sometimes.
In fact, while Dickerson clearly regrets his parents' detachment, he says he is fighting the impulse to hover over his kids and give them the space that he enjoyed.
Stumble It!
posted by pam at 10:07 AM
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