You have to watch out for nostalgia. No matter what people say, hindsight isn’t always 20-20. Sometimes, it’s a lot hazier.
That’s why so many people today look back with fondness at an American past that never really existed, while others feel hopeless against today’s biggest challenges, and unable to acknowledge how much better life is now for most folks than it was for our grandparents.
So I have to be careful when I think back on my childhood in the 1980s and remember it as a time of freedom and adventure – of unsupervised play and unscripted escapades that filled me with joy and wonder, and helped make me who I am today.
I think of that time a lot now as I raise my son, who at 7 is starting to push back against any limits to his own independence. It seems almost wholly unconscious, like it’s coming straight out of every one of his cells – that beautiful human desire to test out the world and see what you can do with it.
The last thing I want to do is get in the way of that. But, man, is it scary. I know that impulse, and I know that it will lead him to push the boundaries around him. I know he’ll go farther than he’s allowed, and do things he’s not supposed to.
I know, because I did the same thing. As soon as I could, I was exploring the woods behind my house in Brewer, digging up cow bones where a farm used to be, and climbing through the drainage pipes that ran everywhere. We found that we could take the railroad tracks all over the place, even to the other side of town.
Not long and we were taking our bikes everywhere they’d go, letting our parents think we were running around the neighborhood while actually going much farther afield, even over the river to the Bangor Mall.
Shouldn’t I want my kid to have the same experience of exploration and discovery? Shouldn’t I want him to figure and find out stuff for himself, to build the confidence and the skills he needs to do the same someday out in the real world?
Or am I romanticizing my childhood too much? Maybe there weren’t so many free days to fill with whatever you could. Maybe our parents were around more than it seems.
Maybe what’s going on is just the usual push-pull between parents and kids, and the anxiety that naturally comes with wondering whether you should hover over them or let them go.
But last week I read something that made me think otherwise. Maybe in this case, nostalgia is on target. Maybe today’s parents, when faced with the dilemma above, are hovering way too much.
A study in the September issue of The Journal of Pediatrics makes the case that the primary cause of anxiety and depression in children and teens, now at an all-time high, is the decline over the last several decades of opportunities for them to engage in activities not overseen or directed by adults.
Independent, unstructured activities promote both immediate satisfaction and long-term happiness, the study argues, and, starting around the time I was born, those kinds of activities have become less and less available to kids of all ages.
So it’s not nostalgia to wonder why we don’t let kids be kids anymore. No longer are they pushed out of the house after breakfast on a day off and told to find something to do. Instead, kids go from practice to practice, rehearsal to rehearsal, one planned-out block of time to the next.
We parents do it because we don’t want our kids to miss out. In a lot of cases, we’re much more involved than our parents were – a good thing – so we see how much there is out there for them. We don’t want them to miss a thing.
But in doing so, maybe they’re missing out on something else.
This weekend, not long after we got back from a wet and muddy hour of youth soccer, my son said he was going outside to play some more. Worried about the drivers who speed by our yard, and of my kid’s ability to completely tune them out, I watched from the window, not letting him know.
I watched as he wandered over to one neighbor’s yard, then another, happy as can be at his impromptu chats.
I watched from a distance as he scored winning goals in imaginary games and fought off imaginary beasts with a fallen tree branch.
I wondered whether we were all holding onto our kids too tightly – and whether I’ll be able to let go when the time comes.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
