Adventure Parenting

The other day, I was hiding from my children using the restroom and I picked up the Michael Chabon book Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.  I got the book for Will for Christmas, mainly because I wasn't able to find the Terry Kay book I had coveted, andWill had put it in the bathroom because he's trying to read Tropic of Cancer in the library (his comment:  "I'm looking forward to getting back to The Dark Tower--by Stephen King--really soon."  Apparently, he's sick of reading jarring descriptions of vaginas that go on for three pages.  The descriptions, not the vaginas.  Although given that it's Henry Miller, the vaginas probably DO go on for three pages.  Why is Blogger's spell check telling me "vaginas" is spelled incorrectly?  Ohhh.  I'm supposed to put "vaginae." Weird.  ) ANYWAY, he wanted to read the Chabon book and so he put it in the bathroom and I picked it up.  The latter chapters are about relationships and such, but the first chapters are about parenting; how scary it is and hard and challenging, et cetera.  It's funny stuff, but it's also painfully honest (this is one of those Truth books I'm so fond of) and Chabon is brilliant in his observations.

Among them:  we are raising a generation of wussy, unimaginative kids.

He doesn't put it that way, of course.  Mahgawd, the man won a Pulitzer.  But he makes the point that our children don't play in the streets (or even the yard) anymore and with the loss of that freedom, they are losing their imaginations, their waistlines, and their innovation.

This gave me pause.  As a child, I didn't play in the street.  We lived on a (barely) paved road frequented by combines and rednecks driving 9,000 miles an hour, so the thought of us playing in the street made my mother pass out cold.  My brothers and I did, however, play outside.  Every day after school until dark, all day long in the summer time, we were outside.  We ran through the pastures, we built forts in the strip of trees behind Daddy's garden, we imagined ourselves a veritable fleet of ships, rockets, race cars, and motorcycles that were actually clumps of crepe myrtles, bicycles, swing sets and random barrels brought home by my father.  We jumped hay bales.  We made mud pies.  We waded in creeks and played basketball or soccer in the yard. 

We got dirty.  We got hot or cold.  My mother provided us with wet paper towels, drinks, extra toboggans, and the firm abjuration not to come inside unless we were bleeding.  Sometimes, we brought books or coloring stuff outside and read or colored under the trees in the front yard.  We played with our cousins or each other when we were at home.

When we visited friends who lived in town, we rode bikes or skated down the sidewalks.  We played football or had pine cones wars, running through drainage ditches and other people's yards heedlessly. 

We LIVED.  I mean, not only did we not keel over from the outsideness of it all, we actually had lives outside of the confines of our home.  We had personalities not shaped solely by the extracurricular activities watched over so carefully by our parents or teachers.  We read stuff and then we acted it out.  We were not afraid of everything.  We weren't nervous.  We were fearless, laughing, dirty, scratched up, imaginative little people.

And on the days when it rained?  We were STILL fearless, laughing, dirty imaginative little people.  We read to each other.  We made shadow puppets on the wall.  We built insanely complicated clubhouses out of sheets and pillows and chairs.  We baked cookies, wrote and starred in plays, colored in a vast array of coloring books.  Sure, we watched some TV.  We played some video games.  But they were rarely the center of our day.  We made our own fun and if our parents gave us parameters, they were loose and designed to prevent serious bodily harm. 

We lived.  We lived hard, my friends.

My kids?  Not so much. 

Oh, it pains me to say that.  It pains me to reveal that my kids have spent their lives inside, mindlessly watching television or playing games completely laid out for them by the careful marketing strategies of toy companies and fast food restaurants.  The earth mama in me shudders at the fact that my kids don't know the changing of the seasons in their blood because they don't know the seasons change except for the increase in allergy medicines or the special programming around holidays.  It saddens me that the back yard is the only yard my children know, that their entire universe is a half acre that is hidden from the street by a fence. 

Y'all, that is just wrong.

We live in one of the safest neighborhoods in Perrydise and I won't let my kids go out by themselves in the front yard.  Because, gods forbid, they might get kidnapped or bitten by a brown widow or stung by a wasp.  I'm not making light of those things.  What if my children DID get kidnapped or bitten or stung?  What if I lived the rest of my own life mourning the loss of my child because I didn't protect him or her?  This is an awful, terrible, soul-crushing thing to think about.  But...

What if they don't get kidnapped?  What if they don't get bitten or stung?  What if they spend their entire lives with me on one half acre (or on very carefully controlled jaunts into "wildernesses") and grow up to be frightened, unimaginative, fat adults with no capability of entertaining themselves or imagining a better world for themselves?

I'm totally serious.

I look at the world we live in, with all of the technological advances and advancing waistlines, with role-playing games that let us be muscle-bound and fight dragons while we munch corn chips on the couch, and wonder if we aren't being set up.  Or turning into a certain Pixar movie featuring a musical-loving robot.  I'm worried.

And I'm doing something about it.  I'm starting to practice Adventure Parenting. 

It's awful.  It's scary.  It makes me feel, sometimes, like a bad parent, which I understand is insane.  But in the freetime my kids have, I am setting my jaw and shoving them out the door. 

"Go play," I say. 

The whining starts.  "It's hot."  "It's cold."  "I'm tired."  "I'm bored." 

"Go play," I say, handing out drinks and sweaters. 

And they do.  They jump on the trampoline (my GAWD, they're going to break their necks), they crawl on the play fort (there are BROWN WIDOWS in the corners), they fight their way into the azalea patch that they call a cave (COPPERHEADS!!!.)  They argue and fall down and they run with sticks and the dog jumps on them and they wig out because something buzzes by their heads.  They play.

I stand inside looking out the window, freaking out a little less every day.

In the grocery store, I let River walk beside me.  I let her run to go look at a toy display.  She carries soda bottles for me.  She drops soda bottles on me.  I cringe and tell her to try again, which often leads to her collapsing on the linoleum and wailing that she caaaaannnnn'''''ttttt doooooo ittttt.  In fact, right now, she's complaining because she can't reach the box of drinks on the table.  I could get up.  I could get the drink for her or tell her to climb on a chair, but I'm not going to. 

Because here's the other thing:  my kids can't problem-solve.  They can't figure things out on their own.  If they are thirsty, they can't look for the drinks themselves or pour themselves glasses of milk.  They can't open up bags of chips.  They can't clean up spills, because we do every fricking thing for them.  We schedule their days to the minute and make sure that they are occupied every single minute.  We open bags, tie shoes, mop spills, wear ourselves out making sure they are safe and comfortable and taken care of.

Part of this is understandable, I guess.  My boy is an Aspie and for the past four years, we've learned that he needs to be occupied, scheduled, informed.  But we've allowed this to mean that he has no free time, no time to figure stuff out for himself, no need to think outside of the electronic boxes he loves.  And, unfortunately, we've allowed this to mean that his sister, who is as neurotypical as they come, is also occupied, scheduled, and informed.  We've allowed it to mean that instead of risking a meltdown, we clean up messes ourselves.  Or give in to demands for TV or video games--even from the kid without scientific reasons for meltdowns.

My kids could change the world with their brains and their personalities, but we have parented them right into a situation in which they might not change anything. 

Hence the Adventure Parenting.  Hence the fact that I just told River to go into her closet and get her clothes for the day.  Hence the fact that after Jeffrey comes home from school and after his homework, he'll go outside for a while before retreating to the digital world that we allow him to escape to.  His sister will go with him and they'll play together.

Here's a side-effect of Adventure Parenting:  my children are interacting.  Now, listen.  They love each other because they're siblings.  But there's an almost-five year age difference between them, never mind the developmental quirks that Jeffrey has.  We haven't really encouraged them to play together, because it seemed ridiculous to do so.  They like snuggling in front of the TV together, or sitting and painting together, but they have never really played together.  Now they do.  Sure, River leads the games with an iron fist:  her naturally more fertile imagination casts her as the boss a little too much for Jeffrey's taste.  And, sure, sometimes Jeffrey gets heartily sick of all of the outsidedness and acts like an ass.  But, for the most part, my kids (and their relationship) are thriving on being forced to play together.

The other night, Will came up to me as I was washing dishes while the kids jumped on the trampoline.  Hands stuffed in his pockets, he said, "I don't know what to do with myself.  They don't really need me out there." 

I looked at him.  "Well, we could always, you know...talk." 

What a revelation:  the idea that we could have a conversation not squeezed in between taekwondo and bedtime and breakfast.  The concept that we didn't have to worry and manage and fix and placate every waking minute of every single day.  The thought that our kids might be able to occupy themselves and wind up OKAY--and so might we.  CRAZINESS.

River is brushing her teeth right now.  Well, actually, she is dragging a chair into the bathroom to brush her teeth.  She has to use the chair because the other day, I forced her to realize that she could use the stepstool to get up on the trampoline all by herself.  The smile on her face as she jumped all by herself, flinging herself away from the earth and my grasping hands...it was like sunshine.  She was transcendent.  I stood in the doorway and kicked myself for denying her that for so long. 

When she's finished brushing her teeth, we'll go outside, where I'll straighten the yard and garden up and she'll help me until she gets bored and goes off to dig a hole or climb a tree or some other adventurous thing that will make me cringe and waver. 

Understand, I'll be cringing because my daughter chose to dress herself in this today: 

Ahem. 

Anybody else wanna have an adventure?