Falls and Freedom

I’m surprised that I’m still alive. Truly. I remember, and vividly so, riding in the back of my dads hot rod while my brother and I caught the gravel rocks that flung up through the gaping hole rusted right through the floor! I’ll never forget the countless times my parents left my brother and I in the car as they took an hour to get groceries (could you imagine?! I cant even leave my boys the the car to pay for my gas without being greeted by a concerned bystander). I’ll always remember pulling a rope with all my might while dad cut down a massive birch tree, used a chain saw to cut it up and a splitter with my younger brother to slice logs into small pieces. One night I was awoken to the sound of coons attacking our chickens. My brother and I met in the hallway and proceed to the coop. My 9 year old brother lead the way in his tightie whities with his gun in hand while I followed with the flash light. To this day I’m not sure where my parents were and it makes me laugh. It also shocks me a little!

I want to start off saying I’m a mama bear. I want to protect my cubs from any and every harm this world has to offer but I also want them to have the skill to defend themselves against danger when I’m not around. It’s a fine line. How much risk is a learning experience and is too little risk detrimental to our children’s skills of independence, judgment and adventure? To be honest I have no clue where that line is. And I think, or at least hope I’m not the only one struggling here. Some days I feel like raising kids is 80% love, 20% molding them into decent people and 100% just trying to keep them alive!

Remember the great movies of the 90s?! Sandlot, Now and Then, Little Giants, Camp Nowhere, Little Rascals…. some of those kids were only 4 or 5! The adventures, the exploring, the freedom and all the life lessons learned in those movies still makes me want to sneak out, ride my bike to some club house and tell scary stores in the middle of the night while eating girl guide cookies. Clearly my childhood wasn’t too far off from that and I am grateful for it. I do feel like it has played a huge part in forming the person I am today. If anything it gave me the freedom to exercise my problem solving skills, build my sense of adventure and confidence to try anything once (except raw fish🤢). I spent my whole summer every year on my bike, at friends cottages, playing in the bush or on my brothers motor boat. My brother and I literally only came home for food.

My oldest is only 4 years old. So he’s just starting to enter that little rascles age and it’s got me thinking. He’s starting school this fall and my husband and I struggled deciding on which school to put him in. One is in “our bus zone”, the other is closer to us and was the one we preferred. The issue was we really do not want to drive our kids to school every single day! I just dont know how parents do it! We decided on the “no bus” school and talked about biking our kids when the weather allowed and someday letting the boys bike alone! Out of curiosity I asked on the mommy network (insert gasp) what age did parents let their kids bike alone to school. I received answers ranging from 8- never! It started a discussion about the safety of it. Fair enough. Some parents brought up the dangers of the road others the dangers of predators. Both valid. But let’s think about this. If you don’t ever teach your kids the rules of the road, how to bike responsibly, stranger danger and give them the space to show you they can do it, how will you or more importantly, THEM, ever truly know they can. Don’t get me wrong, the first day I trust Hudson to bike on his own to school you best believe I’ll be at home shitting myself or I might just hire someone to follow him.

We put so much trust in others daily that we don’t even realize we do. For example every time we drive our families anywhere we are trusting that every other person on the road isn’t too tired, hasn’t been drinking, isn’t distracted, and knows how to drive. When you fly on a plane your trusting the pilot is good at their job, the mechanics didn’t drop the ball, and the Air Traffic Controller is on their game that day. That’s a lot of trust in a lot of strangers yet we don’t think twice about traveling from point A to point B because the benefits far out weigh the smaller risks. When we trust our little ones to try new things and spread their little downy wings we are accepting some risk for the greater benefit of teaching independence!

But again, that fine line, it’s there, I just don’t know where. We are on vacation camping in the mountains. We’ve rented an rv and are enjoying the perks of an rv park. As I sit here I can see about 10 kids aged 3-12ish biking around, running around being kids and having fun without their parents. From what I understand this is a normal part of the campground community. But here is my question, are these parents always happy to give their children this freedom or is it only in the rv park or only on vacation? If it is only here, what makes them feel a sense of safety that’s different then their day to day life? Do pedophiles and predators not like camping? Does having a drink or two and driving seam less harmless here? Or maybe these parents have taught their kids well. They have put in the ground work to teach them judgment, stranger danger, responsibility and are letting them free to use those skills. It’s refreshing to see these kids have fun and interact with each other without parents around to keep them inline.

While bbqing our dinner we found Hudson climbing a tree for the first time. Before we noticed he climbed up fairly high. My first thought was to tell my husband to grab him but then I thought “climbing trees is a right of passage for kids”. Sure he might fall and sustain some damage on the way down but if we don’t let him try it out how will he ever master the skill of climbing a tree?! So instead we encouraged him, told him to watch where he was putting his feet and located the first aid kit just in case.

I know many of you will be thinking sure, ok…. freedom for our kids in this day in age?! You crazy? Times have changed!!!! Your right, they have. But maybe not in the way you feel is most obvious. Are there more predators, pedophile, dangers of the road now then there were 20-30 years ago? I’m not sure that there is. Technology however has made targeting children easier for these sickos. It’s also made us more aware of the dangers out there. This is 100 percent true. Many of you have probably seen this video of a young girl being asked to do sexual things over the Internet. She’s under the assumption that it’s a teenage boy but in reality it’s a pedophile. It’s deeply disturbing especially for fellow parents.

This could easily be their own daughter. I’ve heard parents comment “that’s it I’m moving my kids to the woods away from everyone”, “my kids aren’t ever using the internet again” or even “ you can’t trust anyone anymore”. My husband and I talked about this over a campfire the other night. Without even thinking I said “does it really matter who’s on the receiving end of that live stream?” At first I was shocked I said that but then I agreed with my instinctive thought. Weather it was actually a young boy or an old man that girl would never have known. The more disturbing part of this scenario is that this girl was willing to do sexual things for a stranger! I’m not judging her parents at all. Sometimes we do our very best and our kids will still end up making bad decisions, I think we all have (some worse then others). But instead of everyone focusing on the disgusting fact that a pedophile was involved or that such a site even exists I think we should be talking about the lack of judgment and skill some kids have or I should say don’t have. I remember when the internet became a thing (I know I sound old but it wasn’t that long ago!) our desktop was in our tv room and was so slow it would have been faster for me to find an open landline then wait for msn to load.
My parents made sure I understood the dangers of this so called wide web. They told me anyone could see me, talk to me, steal info from me and if I wasn’t careful to protect myself someone would come for me and I would be sold on the black market. That was enough to scare me shitless. I always assumed if I spoke to someone I didn’t know on the net they would find me and sell me as a sex slave. That realistic scare tactic worked for me and it’s what I use for my children now.

We have an above ground pool that is deep enough to make us nervous and not tall enough to make it impossible for Hudson and Forrest to find a way in. I decided long ago that being real and honest would be the best way, for me, to teach my kids. I showed Hudson a video of someone drowning and explained to him that if you drown you die. I let him struggle in the pool with me by his side for him to see he wasn’t an exception . From that day on he fully understood the consequence of going into the pool alone and respected the water. You might think it’s harsh and it might be, but it works for my family.

I recently read an article that talked about the ban of showing skin in school. It focused on girls in particular. They were taking the option of tank tops, lower cut shirts and short bottoms away from girls because it sends a sexual message to boys. I personally think this is loony toons! If we don’t give them the option to make choices they won’t ever know the difference between good ones and bad ones. I also think it’s nuts (no pun intended) to assume a boy can’t control their testosterone or learn to respect others and their freedom to dress how they want to. Again this is a teaching moment for us parents. We can’t control hormonal feelings but we can teach our kids how to express them and when.

It is our job to teach our kids and give them a set of tools to use until they can develop their own. How you do that is your choice but we can’t send them up the river of life without a paddle. Our world is a scary place and sadly I think it will always be scary for parents but if we don’t set our kids up for success and give them the space to build the confidence they need to add tools then they might not have the skills they need when the time comes to use them.

I hope this encourages you to work on math skills less and street smarts a little more. I hope you let your kids climb trees knowing they will fall. And I hope you teach them to respect themselves as others and to use the tools they have and to always add more.

That line is still there. And I still don’t know where it is! I’m not sure I ever will. It’s a dance back and forth that will have me shitting myself at home and also have me beaming from ear to ear with pride when my boys chose right.