One of the blogs that I read is Woulda Coulda Shoulda by Mir. I love the way she shares her life. She entertains me and makes me cry alternately. I enjoy her posts and I’m always dissapointed when she misses the occasional day. She recently got married and moved from New England to Georgia. Today her post was about the experience of having children living right in her neighborhood. She’s not used to it. She’s especially not used to having what she calls “feral children” living nearby. These are the kids who always show up asking to play, asking to be fed, needing attention, and the parents seem to be nowhere around.
I read Mir’s post and I almost commented. That is unusual for me because I’m a lurker by nature. I wanted to share the joy that I have found living in a neighborhood full of children. I love that my kids can trot themselves two houses away to play with a friend. I love that these friends come over here as well. But then I realized that my spouting about my neighborhood wouldn’t be all that helpful to Mir. The situations are very different. My neighborhood is full of kids whose parents keep track of them. I know most of these parents. I know that if little Charlie shows up at my door to ask to play with Gleek, he probably did so without telling his mom where he went and that I need to send him home to ask his mom first. I know that if little Lucy shows up at my door I need to step out and wave to her mom who is standing on the porch waiting for me to do just that. There is a whole network of relationships built up over 9 years of living in the same place with mostly the same people. There are houses where my kids are not allowed to play because I don’t trust the level of supervision there. There are houses where I’ll let my kids play during the day, but I’d never consider a sleep over. I know which houses welcome kids who show up at the door and which houses really prefer to recieve a call first.
We do have some feral kids in the neighborhood, but there are enough families around that we can take care of them. I am not shy about stating the rules for my house and bouncing a kid who can’t follow the rules. It hasn’t been much of a problem. Mostly children who are feral are so glad to find a structured place that they’ll happily follow rules in order to be allowed to stay and to be fed. It does get annoying sometimes. Non-feral children get annoying sometimes. Even my own kids are sometimes annoying. But My House, My Rules, seems to work pretty well.
I wonder if I lived next door to Mir whether she would consider my kids feral. I know that my kids try to invite themselves over frequently. I know that they ask for food in other people’s homes. I try to teach them to be polite and not invite themselves, but it is hard. I feed neighbor kids all the time and have just kind of assumed that’s normal around here. Do other people look at my occasionally ragamuffin kids and wonder where their parents are? I think we fit in here in Utah. We aren’t the over protective family nor the permissive one. I wonder how different it would be in a place that is not Utah.
I think that while the definition of “good parent” is probably pretty much the same all over the country, the expression of it can be drastically different. There are people who do not believe they can be a good parent unless they buy their child designer clothes and a private education. There are people who believe that good parents fill their child’s time with activities. There are people who believe that good parents don’t over schedule their kids. Each community develops a consensus about how children should be raised. (Note: not all neighborhoods are communities. “Community” implies a network of relationships between the people. Some neighborhoods are just places where people happen to live next door. My neighborhood is very much a community with all the benefits and frustrations that small communities always embody.) My parenting style fits my community’s image of “good parent.” But if I were to change communities I might not find so much acceptance and that would be hard.
I believe that Mir will sort it out. That she’ll be able to establish boundaries and build the relationships she needs to be happy in her new home. I just hope that the community into which she has moved is flexible enough to accept her for who she is and that they can see she is a good parent even if it is expressed differently from the ways they are accustomed to.
I don’t think she has witnessed real feral children – just semi-feral ones.
In the last complex I lived in, I had children try to walk into my apartment without so much as a “hello”. I had one wanting me to let him play with my children’s stuff when they were at a church activity. (My kids were 13 and 14 at the time and he was only 7. I wouldn’t have let him play with the stuff even if they were there.) I had kids whose parents I’ve never seen ask me to buy them ice cream.
I finally started setting rules that applied not only to my apartment, but the area outside of it. First one, no taking anyone’s toys without their permission. Second, no hitting people. And so forth. I didn’t do this for my kids – they could say ‘no’ and could defend themselves. I had to do it because I lived near a little wooded area and kids would actually play in my doorway and have fights. I would then stomp out, interrogate the involved parties, pass judgment and lay down moral rules they should have already known.
I became known as the “grumpy lady”, but it didn’t stop them from playing near my place. It did make them watch their behavior, though. The seven year old I spoke of earlier loved to throw temper tantrums whenever he couldn’t get his way and after I started to settled the disputes outside my door (it’s hard to work on a college paper with kids screaming outside), the older kids would shut him up by saying, “Quiet or she’ll come at and yell.”
I’m glad that the feral children here don’t directly bother me. They’ve lost a ceramic cup from one of my art pieces, but if I was that attached to it, I wouldn’t had in on my planter stand in the first place. Besides, here they all speak Spanish, so I can’t really law down the law anyway.
Conflicting parenting styles are an issue I’m struggling with right now. I don’t know whether it’s Germany in general or just the area I’ve landed in, but around here there seems to be a solid emphasis on spotless houses and model behavior. Children are not to make messes or crawl on furniture. And they must be properly attired for the weather at all times. If you let them get cold feet you are a bad parent.
It drives me crazy sometimes, and gives me an insecurity complex sometimes, and makes it very difficult to strike a balance between the way I’m comfortable living and the way my community expects me to live. I don’t care much what they think of me, per se, but I need to interact with these people and my children need to be friends with their children, so a bit of adjustment has been required.
Wow. If I’d ever asked for food at someone else’s house, my parents would have grounded me. Really interesting, how different social norms can be…
My mother taught me that asking for food directly (at least when I got to be a teen) was tactless. She recommended against asking at all unless I were in real need. On the other hand, she suggested that if I was determined to ask anyway to do so indirectly.
examples:
direct (tactless): Can I have some of that pizza?
indirect (more tactfull): Those cookies really make the house smell good, don’t they?
There is one little boy (say 4 years old?) that lives two doors down that swears like a sailor, and has punched my kids. I’ve yelled at him, and I’ve asked my kids, “You know he hits and swears WHY were you near him?”.
The other siblings are nice enough but they ride their bikes all the way up our driveway… from the fence in is MY backyard… so I’m always saying, “You can ride on my driveway but not past the fence, OK?”
My neighborhood kids are all hispanic… so I don’t know if they understand me or not.
On the other hand there are two little blonde boys, one lives 3 doors down and one lives 2 streets away who are always wandering around.
The one who lives 2 streets away asks for food and wants to play with my kids at around 7:30pm. (Until I called the Grandma to come and get him, and we haven’t seen him wandering around here since.)
I’m scared for the wandering kids who need so much attention… they might just take up the offer from the guy in the truck, “Do you want a ride in my pickup truck?” (this actually happened recently to a friend’s son – only a few streets away – thankfully she watches him like a hawk and was there to scare off the guy.)
I’m all for being the “Grumpy Lady” with boundaries and rules.
When I was growing up, most of the kids who were friends with my siblings usually came to our place, and many of them would ask for food or sometimes just rummage our fridge directly. I don’t think it ever occurred to any of us to think that was odd. As a kid I assumed that was normal and did the same when I visited others … which was indeed considered rude by my friends. *^_^*