1. My sister Andrea once asked where I come up with the links I include on my blog. Well, here’s an example. Last week, my sister Cecelia was in from New York and sharing pictures on her camera of a city built of toothpicks, which was on display at a children’s museum in Syracuse, New York. I thought, Now that I have GOT to find online. And here you are: Toothpick Cities 1 and 2, courtesy of Stan Munro.
2. On Thanksgiving Day, I retreated to the deserted front room to nurse, and discovered a Time magazine with the cover story entitled “The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting.” I’ve been meaning to write a whole post on this article, but since I can barely find time to write at all, I’ll have to make do with using up a few paragraphs of my Quick Takes to cover it.
3. Lenore Skenazy, who let her son ride the NY subway alone at age 9, believes that
There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, “10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.”
I’m still not sure I would let my kid ride the subway alone, but it does make me stop and think about my paranoia in letting Alex go outside to play. We spend our whole lives paralyzed by the thought that someone might decide to snatch our kid while we’re not looking. Yes, it would be horrible…but how rational a fear is it? We hear about every single abduction that happens in the U.S., and it’s still not very many. OTOH, who wants to be the one to whom it happens because they weren’t paying attention?
4. One parent talks about how his kid’s art teacher said, “He’s a gifted artist,” He started trying to set up art lessons for his son, but his son wasn’t convinced.
“He looks at me like I’m from outer space,” Honoré says. “‘I just wanna draw,’ he tells me. ‘Why do grownups have to take over everything?’ “
5. I love this part:
Principal Karen Faucher instituted a “no rescue” policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter’s coordinated outfit.
!!!
Alex is terrible about forgetting his lunch; in fact, I’m the one that generally remembers it (sometimes after we’ve pulled out of the driveway). But I’m always afraid that his teachers will call DFS on me if I let him go without lunch in order to learn the lesson of personal responsibility. Of course, Alex is not quite 5 years old. At what point do you begin these lessons?
6. We’re parents, and pain suffered by our children resonates, reverberates and magnifies inside our own souls. We want to protect them from the shame and humiliation that we have experienced in our own lives. The trouble is, mistakes are necessary for us to learn. Humiliation and scolding from people we idolize and trust are necessary for us to learn. Every fiber of my being longs to protect my children from such things. Yet if I list the top 10 most important lessons I’ve learned in my life, five of them were learned instantaneously through spine-tingling, creepy-crawly moments of shame and humiliation at the hands of peers—or mentors. Tough, but true: sometimes it doesn’t sink in when we say it gently.
7. Last but not least, there’s this:
Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. “They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they’re requesting classes. That’s their job.” She’s come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she’s encountered. “I hope that we’re getting away from the helicopter parenting,” Meyer says. “Our philosophy is ‘Give ’em the morals, give ’em the right start, but you’ve got to let them go.’ They deserve to live their own lives.”
Holy cow, Teresa! You go, girl! (Teresa is the financial secretary at our parish. How’s that for getting on the map???)
Kathleen M. Basi 
I read her book Free Range Parenting and thought it was very thought provoking. I didn’t agree with everything she said in her book, but it did make me think how I may be overprotective and controlling.
7. Oh, awesome! Also, I’m originally a Missouri girl, so I always love it when I find other bloggers who are, too!
And I’d be interested in reading your own thoughts about “overparenting!”
I read the Free Range Parenting book as well as this article and one thing that I think is important is that abductions have not increased since the 50s when we let kids run wild. It’s just that the news is on 24 hour constant cycle now so everything is national news. Before, just the local areas would hear about abductions which made them futher between/completely absent. Also, it’s always far more likely for your child to be abducted by someone they know then a stranger.
My mom was great with letting me be independent (teaching me how to take the bus, having me do chores, letting me learn from my own mistakes in school) and because of that I fared a lot better post 18 then my peers did. With half of them, I had to teach them how to do laundry and how to take the bus/read bus schedules in the dorms which is ridiculous. I know their parents thought they were doing the right thing but really in the end it just makes it harder for their kids to survive.
Also, I know one person who’s parents always did her homework through high school because they were so terrified that she wouldn’t be perfect if she did it on her own… and I’ll give you one guess what happened in college.
Love your takes!
My 6-year-old is in Kindergarten. She takes a thermos with her milk every day (school charges 50 cents for a carton of milk!!!!!) Anyway, the first day she forgot it, my husband ran back to school to get it to her. The second time she forgot it, he did that again. AFter the second time, I told him…”STOP!!!!! She will never learn to remember it on her own if you keep doing that.” So the third time she forgot it, he simply told the teacher, “Please have Dani drink water at lunch.”
She hasn’t forgotten her thermos again. Granted…that’s not a whole lunch…but I would say a kindergartener can learn. 🙂
Because I’m a teacher, I wanted to personally thank every person in that article…can you thank Teresa for me? It is SO time for children to start learning from mistakes, not from their parents fixing everything FOR them.
I love how much interest this has sparked! I know I linked about a hundred different things in there, but Skenazy’s blog link is one you should look at, if you haven’t had the chance. You’ve got to laugh at some of the things she uncovers.
Skenazy is reacting to a cultural model, and reactions, by nature, tend to be extreme. How many of us have *reacted* to something and then had to admit later that we went too far–ignoring whatever portion of the provocation was grounded in reality? I think reality lies somewhere in between (in the middle? Gasp!) We all would like to believe we can react without swinging too far in the other direction, but finding the balance is really the key. Elizabeth, I will indulge you and post more on this on Monday. 🙂
I’m one who hates our current model of what I consider over-parenting; yet it is so hard to buck the tide. My daughter walks from the bus stop 1/2 mile on the other side of our subdivision home from school every day. A couple of other kids walk most of the way with her, but the last few blocks are on her own. My autistic son walks 1.5 miles home from school daily. In both cases I know people who have raised eyebrows when they learned that my kids did this, but they are in middle and high school–they should be able to go short distances on their own.
I think part of the reason we parent like that is because we can. We have only a couple of kids, we have multiple family cars, we have money for paid activities and supervision. We also do not have neighborhoods full of kids. Our kids grades and assignments are posted on-line so parents are as responsible for the grades as the kids are.
Yes, I think you’re right–the point about fewer kids has been made before and makes sense on a number of fronts. ONe of them is that the kids look out for each other, so the more of them there are, the better looked-after they are by their peers, and the more parents can let them go.