protect, don’t prevent
Below is a picture of my youngest, Dexy, from the weekend just gone. To celebrate his second birthday we took him on a little jaunt around the local graveyard, as you do. And as you can see, he dressed respectfully.
On Friday, we had a bit of a bash that started with the idea of inviting some of his other two-year-old buddies over for some party games, a cake and a sing-song. It ended with 30 people present, the Technics spinning and about £500 worth of food and booze consumed, plus the realisation that none of them will remember anything of it… which is perhaps just as well.
A dreaded second birthday, so I’ll meet you at the cemetry gates…”
In discussing the typically cropped, cut and curated selection of photos for Facebook, another parent raised the potential risk of plastering our youngsters’ faces online. Whilst I categorically respect anyone’s right to keep their kids away from social media, I’ve always been of the opinion that we have bigger battles to fight when it comes to steering our offspring onto the right path. Sure, we are living in a society where our young people may appear in greater danger than ever before, but the reality doesn’t necessarily relay the same message.
Parenting isn’t easy, but seeing your children flourish because they have been granted trust, freedom and responsibility, is perhaps the biggest gift of them all.
Without going into the intricacies of all that, the point I’m trying to make is that we are perhaps stunting our children’s development more by hiding them away; by shielding them from the unknown rather than letting them go and explore it. Of course, I’m not going to send my 11-year-old out late at night to buy the milk for the morning breakfast - there’s every chance he’ll come back with a forgetful look on his face and some Match Attax cards anyway - but by the same token I will send him up to buy ice cream when we’re on holiday abroad, and he will be told to speak in the local language. “How much do you want that ice cream?”
As a parent you tread a constant fine line between opportunity and danger, between acceptance and prevention; you make a lot of decisions based on your own childhood, even if that was four decades ago; and you’re constantly aware of the perils that are out there… the real ones and the imagined.
Parenting isn’t easy, but seeing your children flourish because they have been granted trust, freedom and responsibility, is perhaps the biggest gift of them all.
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