A friend connected me to this article by Tim Elmore, who believes that "our 'over-protection, over-connection' style" of parenting "has damaged" our children.
Hmmm...in my experience, I think many of us are worried about this exact thing.
I hate to sound like my parents when I talk about "when I was a kid...", but things were really different. I grew up in a small, coastal, mill town where we played outside, made forts in the bush and kept a keen eye on the clock so that the axes we borrowed from our dads' tool sheds were back before they got of the bus from work at the end of the day. Imagine us, straight-legging down the street with an axe down the leg of our pants, hiding it from the nosy old lady on the corner, racing to get it back in the shed so we could be washing our hands before our mom found any tell-tale evidence of our lumber jacking escapades. We didn't have video games, and cartoons last for 30 minutes on one channel, so there was no way our moms allowed us to hang around in the house complaining about being bored.
We didn't get rides places; we rode our bikes everywhere. This in itself built up our future resumes as riding a bike--no matter how old and hand-me-downed it was--necessitated some serious engineering skills building jumps and obstacle courses. Nothing was too extreme, of course, as YouTube hadn't been invented yet to fill our minds with death-defying feats, and the X Games wasn't here to justify a youth misspent. The bikes extended our range, allowing us to travel much farther (and get back before the work bus much faster), and it also added to our education. We could now easily get to Kirby's Pond where we collected salamanders, pulled sword ferns to make swords and bracken ferns to make throwing spears, and we learned life lessons like running away from the bad, big kids who smoke and swore, and building secret, camouflaged forts to hide in--laughing--when they chased us. The bikes took us down to the stream where we learned about commitment; you can't pull up short on an epic flight over the creek bed without getting hurt, wet muddy, and an earful from your mom who spent all day doing laundry.
And summer was the ultimate freedom, described best by phrases like "be home before dark" and "don't get caught doing anything stupid". We would walk down to the store by ourselves, and buy whatever teat we could afford with the change in our pockets. The stores then never had those signs that said "2 kids at a time" and "no backpacks". Man, if you screwed around or were rude to someone, you knew your dad would hear about it and that you would get a whupping when you got home--without a chance to explain your side of the story. Adults ruled and no one questioned them. There was no such a thing as a child negotiating out of trouble; if you messed up, you took your lumps. That was called learning.
We came from a neighbourhood, a community, that worked hard to get by. Dad's appreciated jobs in the mill because a job there meant that you could buy a house and raise a family. We took vacations...crammed in the family car, and travelled to wondrous places like Surrey to visit relatives where they had amazing things like 7-11s and McDonald's. I did well in school, and my dad was proud. He showed it by saying things like "Good job. I am proud of you". Recently, I had a conversation (that I didn't realize was actually an argument) with a beloved family member about how I should be paying my daughter handsomely for every A she earned, and then add a special bonus for the perfect report card she brought home last month. Payment for As? Isn't that her job? Do you understand how rich I could have been if could have only negotiated a fair price for every A I brought home?
Everything is not supposed to come easily. We need to get knocked down and scratched to learn what hurts. We need to be left to figure conflict out with our peers without parental referees so that we can problem solve for ourselves when we are older. We need to have our hearts broken so that we can learn to love. Our kids need to be able to accept disappointment so that they can develop resiliency. That way, they will learn to take risks--calculated risks--that are smart and safe, and that will open up options and opportunities for them when they are adults. Risk-taking is an essential part in building success; it is how we build leaders.
Tim Elmore's article provides some good discussion points to that last idea of building leaders. Have a read and let me know what you think.
http://growingleaders.com/blog/3-mistakes-we-make-leading-kids/
It's a choice:
or
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