Kids these days

Another thing that I do online is review books (you may have noticed some of these reviews on the sidebar, in the LibraryThing box). I've just finished reviewing this month's selection, and as I did so, I realized that I really had more to say, not necessarily about the book, but about parenting books in general, and a blog being the perfect place to air your unsolicited opinions, I thought that I'd post it here instead.

The book in question was called Working Parents, Thriving Families. As a working parent, I picked it up, expecting a few time management tips, maybe. As it turned out, it was more of a dissertation on How You Should Parent. I found the author's style of parenting to be a little intense in places, though I'm not sure whether the fault lies with him or me. For example, in a section on how "to monitor our children well", he mentions an'unhealthy' thing that a friend's boys (aged 11 and 12) had wanted to do. What was this unhealthy action? Was it sneaking off to an R-rated movie? Was it forgoing supper in favor of cake and soda? Nope. It was jumping on a trampoline with no protective fencing around it. Egad! How will the boy survive to turn 13? I found myself thinking, "Seriously? In my day, no one had ever heard of protective fencing, and yet, somehow, we survived."

The thing I find unpalatable about parenting books is that eventually, so many of them come down to this 'us vs. them' mentality, where kids exist merely to 'push the boundaries' and parents exist merely to draw the lines. Shouldn't you see your child as a person? Don't you remember what it was like to be 11? Would it kill that 12 year old to see the PG-13 film? You know that your child is going to grow up and realize that the entire world has unfortunately not been created by Pixar, right? Do you always make healthy choices? Why is it somehow perfectly ok, in our culture, to insist on allowing your children only to eat fruit leather for a snack, cut their juice with water because, "you know, juice is so sugary"...and then chow down on Oreos yourself after they go to bed?

Don't you think that the key to good parenting ought to be communication? Don't you think that we should be less focused on creating an environment where our child can never come to harm, even if we are not paying attention, and more focused on teaching our child about the world around them, on being a part of our child's life so that they feel they can talk to us in a collaborative way - so that they are neither totally sheltered nor without guidance? To protect too much is to create a Sleeping Beauty situation. If Sleeping Beauty's parents had told her about the spinning wheel, she would have known how not to prick her finger. In the same way, if you never jump without a net, how do you know to avoid falling?

If you treat parenting like a general going to war you'll have very well-behaved, clean, appropriate kids. But if so many things are forbidden, either the lure of the forbidden becomes so much stronger, or their natural curiosity is quenched. I'm not sure which is worse. What seems the biggest shame, if you view parenting as a tactical, practical task, is that you miss out, to a certain extent, on knowing your children as people.

That's not to say that you shouldn't have rules. Many rules are important - 10 hours of sleep per night, don't hit your brother, etc. But I suppose I am afraid if I do as Mr. Palmiter suggests and "assess visits to another child's home", for instance, discouraging interactions with kids whose parents are late to pick them up or 'seem disorganized', or who fail to call while your child is visiting them...well, who would that leave, exactly, in the good camp? If all parents evaluated by that standard, I know I wouldn't ever have visited anybody as a child. On time was not my parents' strong suit. Nevertheless, they were very good parents.

What do you think, o blog reader? Am I being too hippified here, for lack of a better word? Of course I realize that there's a distinction between the parent and the child, and I do have the last word. At the same time, while I want my child to grow up to be safe, I find it distasteful that 'safe' appears to be the number one American virtue at the moment. Sure, I want my daughter to be safe. But I want her to be able to think for herself, stand up for herself and for others, if they need it. I want her to question, and to explore. I want her not to be afraid to be friends with the late kid, or the kid whose mom packed the Twinkies, or even the kid who has terrible parents - because terrible parents are not terrible children, and nobody deserves to be written off for the sins of others. I want her not to take things at face value. Someday I'm not going to be there. But she will still be around. I don't want her to lose her way then, because I did all her thinking for her. What do you think?