In two posts, first here and then, in a follow-up, here, my friend and fellow Island resident Rob Paterson has asked some valid questions about what constitutes being a "good parent". The posts - and the articles quoted - focus on what today's parents do to keep kids safe - and how relentless efforts to protect children from danger actually end up "protecting" them from living a full and rich life.
As a corollary, there's the suggestion that adults who micromanage children's play time are doing more harm than good.
I couldn't agree more. I get as exasperated with over-parenting as I do with neglectful parents. I fear we're producing generation after generation of kids who won't have stories to tell about their childhood that don't start with "One day my Mom and I ...".
The world is filling up with kids who have been so protected from danger and failure that they cannot enjoy risk and success.
***************
When Erin was about 9 or 10, she signed up for baseball. They needed coaches, so I agreed to help out and ended up with a clot of pre-teens eager to draw from my vast knowledge of the sport. Well, good luck with that. I've played softball and baseball, and know the basics - but that's about it. I figured at that age, the basics would be enough, and I was more right than I expected.
We got to the first game and learned the League Rules. In order to foster self-esteem among the players, the main rules were 1. Every Child Goes Up To Bat In Every Inning; and 2. Every Child Gets To Hit The Ball.
There was no such thing as a "strike" or a "ball". The pitcher kept pitching to a kid until that child made contact and felt the joy of running to first base.
Brilliant.
How long do you figure that first game lasted? It started at 6:30PM and went till 9:15 ... when it was called for bedtime. In the goddamn fourth inning.
I mean, how could it not go that long? Little Johnny or Janey would arrive at the plate, and anything that was thrown in his or her general direction was fair game. Ten feet over your head? Swing and a miss. Ball thrown behind you? Swing and a miss. Whiff. Whiff. Whiff.
Same kid at the plate for five minutes at a go, everybody - him, his teammates, the coaches, the spectators, everybody - praying that by some miraculous turn of events this child could accidentally make glancing contact with the ball so that it could dribble off the tip of his bat, squib to its resting place four feet in front of the plate, and dear Lord we could have another batter.
It was excruciating.
The next game, I called the kids over during warm-up. I said, "How many of you signed up to play baseball?" Every hand dutifully raised.
"Who can tell me what a strike is?" Everybody knew.
"Who thinks the game we played the other night was real baseball?" Not one.
"Who wants to play baseball, and not that game?" Every hand shot up without one second's hesitation.
"OK. Here's what we're going to try. You can have as many balls as you want - the pitchers aren't that good. But three strikes and ... what?"
A little red-headed kid ventured, "You're ... out?"
"That's right. Three strikes and you're out, just like real baseball. So if you swing at a bad pitch and miss it, that's one strike. Swing at one over your head, that's two. Swing at another and miss, you come back and sit down till your next at-bat. Is everybody cool with that?"
They were.
I explained what was happening to the opposing coach, who looked doubtful. "That's not how the league says we should do it," he pointed out. "It's not fair to your kids. I think we should play it the way we're supposed to."
"Oh, I'm good with whatever you want to do with your kids. They can have as many swings as you want. But my kids want to try this."
"Fine. But I feel bad for them."
The game started, and our first batter was Luke, a big, goofy kid with a perpetual smile. The first pitch was a mile high, and he almost fell over reaching for it.
"Strike One," I said. His smile faltered.
The next pitch hit the dirt about five feet in front of the plate. Luke swung and just missed tipping the ball on the second bounce.
"Strike Two," I said. Luke frowned.
The next pitch was way outside, and he swung again.
"Strike Three, Luke. Go sit down." He looked back at me, eyes wide. But the next batter was already prising the bat from his hand and Luke walked slowly back to the bench.
The next kid had seen what happened to Luke. When the first pitch came in high, he didn't move a muscle. Just like his heroes on TV. He looked back at me and grinned.
Three or four pitches later, he got a good one. He swung and made solid contact and I wish you could have seen his face when he arrived at second base ... the joy and excitement and sense of accomplishment just radiating from him. He hollered back at the bench: "It's easy, guys! Just wait for a good one!"
And they did. There were a few strikeouts after that, but they were honest cuts at good pitches, for the most part. But almost all the kids got hits, and not little doinky hits off the top of the bat from swinging at a pitch three feet overhead - good, solid hits that rocketed through the infield. Singles, doubles, even a couple of error-assisted home runs.
I felt sorry for the other team. By swinging at every ridiculous pitch (as their coach told them to), they were hardly able to propel the ball back to the pitcher. Those times they looked ready to wait for a good pitch, their coach harangued them to "SWING!"
The game was over in an hour and a half. We kicked their ass. They were playing by rules set up by adults to "help" them, and they just could not overcome that obstacle.
And when they did get a hit, there was no enjoyment in it. They saw what we all saw - that their hits were mere chance, the law of averages coming into play.
By protecting them from failure, the adults had managed to rob them of the opportunity to enjoy success.
*************
When Erin was 13, she and her piano teacher Carrie-Ann decided she would do the Royal Conservatory of Music Practical Piano Exam. It meant learning and performing a collection of difficult scales and short compositions in front of a panel of judges. Scary stuff, when you're 13.
The exam was on a Saturday. On Thursday, Erin came home and said "I'm not ready. I haven't practiced enough. I don't want to do the exam this year. Carrie-Ann says it's okay if I wait for a year."
"But you've known about this exam for months," I said. "How can you not be ready?" Erin shrugged.
I knew what the problem was. She has always had my work ethic, poor dear. And what she also knew for months was that if she wasn't ready, she could back out. Escape hatch.
I thought for a bit and said, "No. You're taking the exam. We paid for it, you agreed to take it, and if I let you back out, what am I teaching you?"
She argued. She cried. She begged. She promised. She yelled, slammed doors, flopped on her bed, wouldn't eat supper, called me all sorts of names. But nothing she did would change my mind.
Later that night, I heard her practicing. She woke up in the morning and practiced, and when she got home from school on Friday she went right to the piano. The pleading didn't stop, but when she met the brick wall she resigned herself to doing as well as she could.
Saturday came, and I drove her to the exam venue. I waited while she went in - no spectators. I listened through the heavy doors as much as I could, and I heard some good things and heard some clunkers and it didn't much matter because I don't have anywhere near the musical knowledge to tell if she was doing well or sucking like a Hoover.
So I waited, wondering if I'd done the right thing. If she did this and failed, would her confidence be shattered? Would she give up piano? Was I being a good parent, or was I trying to expunge some sort of childhood guilt of my own here?
She came out, and when I asked her how she did, she said, "I don't know. Some things I did okay, and some things I screwed up. They'll mail us the results."
It took a month for the results to arrive. When I found them in the mailbox, I had to wait for Erin to get home. I wanted her to open the letter.
She got home, took the letter from me, and went down to her room to open it. I waited.
She came up, beaming. She had passed. Just barely. Not Honours. Not with Flying Colours. She had squeaked through, but it didn't matter. She had passed.
The thing is, she didn't need to take the exam that year. I could have protected her from the risk of failing it, of having to go back and practice all that same stuff all over again. I could have let her walk away from the fear. But then what?
She's an elementary and middle school music teacher now. She has a Black Belt in Karate and teaches that, too. She does some things knowing she might suck but not afraid of sucking.
And she keeps her word. When she says she's going to do something, she doesn't bail.
*********
The point of all this is not "Oh, look how smart I was," or "Oh, I was the best parent ever!". I was like any other parent. I screwed up more than I'd like to admit and sometimes it feels like my kids survived and thrived in spite of me rather than - as we all would like to believe - because of me.
When people ask me if I'm proud of what my kids have done, I demure. Their accomplishments are not mine, and while I can admire what they've done, I won't appropriate their pride in it. The risk is theirs, and the pride is theirs.
But I am proud of them as people - as decent, kind, productive human beings - and proud of the job we did in staying out of their way so they could become everything they are.
And that's the key, and the point of all this. We stayed out of the way and demanded our kids take risks on their own, that they not play things safe, that they face the spectre of failure one on one and do their best to beat it back.
Being a good parent isn't about protecting your children from danger. When we create a society where children are kept captive by their parents' paranoia, shuttled from activity to activity, shielded from the bogeyman in the darkened bushes or the possibility of failure or disappointment or falling short, we cheat both our kids and ourselves.
Our kids, because they lose an essential element of childhood. And ourselves, because we foolishly squander the potential they once possessed.
This is a picture of me and my older brother Jay and Mom from sometime in the 1960s - I'm going to guess she was in her early forties, although ... funny, huh? ... I can't wrap my head around looking at a picture of Mom and imagining the woman in the photo being younger than I am now.
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