Anyone who grew up during the 70s-80s had a full-on childhood. There were no adults helicoptering our every move. We were hardcore survivalists. I imagine our guardian angels to be all hard and jaded. The poor newbie guardian angel does not get praised after guiding a 10 year-old down a softened plastic slide, and straight back to his mother who is waiting a few feet away. The newbie angel is met with:
“BAH, The 10 year-olds in MY day would make a five-foot bike ramp out of trash, and then follow that insanity up with a game of four-wheeler tag. The fools would literally run each other down. RUN. EACH-OTHER. DOWN!” *Then jaded angel spits on the ground before taking his leave of newbie angel. (of course, angel spit blooms immediately into a flower, so it is ok)
It was a time where kids ran free through neighborhoods, completely unhindered by the lack of adult supervision. We governed ourselves, didn’t pay much attention to safety, and played extremely hard until the streetlights came on. Streetlights, for those of you who were not from that time, were the universal sign to get your butt in the house quickly. We climbed, we created, we schemed, we fought, we fell, and we made incredibly poor decisions. It was amazing. At that, my guardian angel scoffs:
“AMAZING?! Trying to help your brother off the roof because you removed the ladder. That was AMAZING? The firecracker fight, AMAZING?! The King of the trampoline game, AMAZING?! Don’t even get me STARTED on the smoke bomb incident.”
If you ever found one of us pale, out of breath, and professing our love of family, you knew someone probably took it just a little too far. Truth be told, my heart is thankful parenting practices shifted towards keeping tabs on small humans incapable of rational thought. However, there is something to be said about the skills that we walked away with – conflict resolution, problem solving, learning how to lose, learning how to win, figuring out how to compromise, standing up for ourselves, standing up for others, picking ourselves up off the ground.
These things seem to be tragically deficient in our kids today. I’m not saying we revert back to the Lord of the Flies mentality. However, I am thinking we might want to pull back a little. Maybe we should let our kids learn to fail, learn to solve their own problems, and give them the chance to develop resiliency. It is much easier to learn resiliency at 10, in lieu of having to learn it at 20. My thought? Let them play. Let them fall down. Let them work through frustration and conflict. Just make sure you don’t hand them a pack of firecrackers unsupervised. Firecracker fights happen that way. Just ask my guardian angel. *a flower blooms*
General Musings of a Gen Xer 