Growth and safety
Recently I was pointed at this article: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subway-alone and asked my opinion. The article is from the New York Sun and is an editorial from a woman who took her nine year old to downtown New York and deliberately left him there with money and subway maps so that he could find his own way home. The adventure was by the request of the son who wanted to see if he could do it.
What Lenore Skenazy did is not something I would do, but that is primarily because I am completely unfamiliar with New York. I have no idea what areas are safe and what are not. In my head “New York Subway” is fairly synonymous with “dangerous.” If I was dropped downtown and told to find my own way home, the experience would be highly stressful to me. Because the experience would be frightening for me, I don’t consider it appropriate for one of my kids. I might feel differently about it if I lived in New York and rode the subway regularly. I do agree with the points that Ms. Skenazy makes. My job as a parent is not to wrap my children in a cocoon of safety. My job is to guide their growth.
I find Tomato seedlings a good metaphor for this. Early in the spring I fill little cups with dirt and plant seeds in them. Soon the seeds begin to sprout and grow. In my sunny windowsill, they grow tall very quickly. The first time I grew seedlings I was very pleased by this. Then I planted the seedlings outside and they were all dead within a week. The seedlings had grown and adapted for indoor conditions. They were unprepared for real weather and so they died. Over the course of several years I tried many different plans for growing tomato seedlings. The best way I’ve found to grow tomato seedlings is to start setting them outside during the day as soon as they sprout. This way they can experience the weather and adapt to it. I bring the seedlings inside at night when the temperatures are cold enough to kill or when the weather is too fierce for baby plants to handle. This way I raise up little plants that are prepared to handle the outdoors.
The metaphor is far from perfect and I certainly hope that I do a much better job raising kids than I do raising tomato seedlings. It is my job as a parent to carefully expose my children to things that are hard for them, but which will help them to grow in ways that will be useful later in their lives. With this in mind, I made Kiki and Link mow the lawn today. As they struggled to push the heavy mower, I knew that the struggle will make them stronger and better able to handle other challenges in the future. And when they were done they could look around the yard with a sense of accomplishment. I saw how straight and tall they stood. They felt good knowing that they had really contributed to our household. Nothing builds self confidence better than completing a truly difficult task. Hopefully when they are faced with a difficult task in the future, Link and Kiki will say “well, if I can mow a lawn I can certainly do that.”