Back in My Day
Let me pull up my pants a little higher on my chest and look down at you over my reading glasses (which you probably already noticed are perched at the end of my nose) and tell you what childhood was like Back in My Day.
During the era of life known as Back in My Day, parents didn't seem to have a lot going on from a helicoptering standpoint. My mom was a mostly stay-at-home-mom who did freelance writing for a couple of local newspapers and magazines. When I look back at childhood, I definitely remember her being around and doing things for us or with us. For example, I remember summer adventures to the Summer Movie Program at the local cinema where they showed definitely-not-first-run children's movies for free once a week. We watched movies like "Pippi Longstocking", "Benji", "Apple Dumpling Gang", "Herbie", and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks". After the movie we would always have a picnic at one of the local parks in town. My mom was also a big fan of taking us to the library. Our town had five or six libraries, so my mom made it a habit of taking us to a different one each week because variety is the spice of life. She made cookies and cupcakes and, my favorite, homemade popsicles.
As great as my mom was, however, she was pretty much like most 1970's and 80's parents I knew: very hands-off. Lest you think I mean neglectful, I don't. Let me explain a typical day-off from school at my house during that era. My brother and I could sleep until we woke up on our own and then we made ourselves breakfast, usually something like a slice of buttered toast or a bowl of Cheerios. Then we'd get dressed in clothes that we could get dirty in and head out on our bikes to see what the neighbor kids were up to. We lived in the country and our closest kid neighbors we liked were at least mile away. My brother and I put in many miles on the dirty farm roads around our neighborhood. If the first neighbor kid wasn't available, we'd power on to the next one. Or, better yet, we would find the first neighbor kid at home and invite him to join us as we headed together to find out which other neighbors were around.
Here's the hands-off part of the story: we didn't have cell phones and we didn't use the neighbor kids' home phones to check-in with our mom. We would be gone for hours at a time and our mom had no idea where we were. If we didn't eventually come home for a meal, she would have started making calls, but until then she was never too concerned that we were dead in a ditch somewhere or kidnapped or experimenting with drugs. So long as we eventually came home and no neighbor adults called to say we were in trouble, that was fine by my mom.
Here's the thing: there really wasn't much to worry about. My mom knew all the neighbors and they knew her. It wasn't a mystery that we were probably either at a neighbor's house or on our bike somewhere in between. She wasn't concerned about evil touching our safe little corner of the world.
Back in the 1970's and 80's the world just felt more safe. Sure, there were the occasional news stories that broke into the national spotlight about kids who had been kidnapped or of families who had been murdered. But those stories didn't dominate any sort of national news conversation because 24-hour cable news wasn't a thing yet in the 1970's and 80's. News commentators didn't have to fill up endless hours with stories told over and over from new angles with increasingly salacious details to keep viewers tuned in. And there was no internet yet -- and certainly no social media -- to pass frightening stories along and keep everyone terrified of the outside world. There was no website to track the whereabouts of all the sex offenders in our town. Our 1970's parents were blissfully ignorant of the dangers around us and that's why they weren't worried about the hours we spent outside of their presence as we adventured with the neighbors.
Fast-forward to the decade we are now in (The 2010's? Is that what you call it?). Now, every terrible thing that happens to children in the world is available for public consumption all the time. There are Amber Alerts sent directly to our phones, social media warnings about kids being snatched from Target, fears of transexual predators lurking in public bathrooms, seemingly-weekly school shootings, high profile pedophile coaches/team doctors/teachers, and terrifying tales of human sex trafficking rampant in even the most idyllic towns. If you read or watch the news, this is a terrifying time to be a child because the coverage makes it seem that danger is literally lurking around every corner.
Back in My Day, kids weren't as accessible as they are now. In my house growing up, we had a phone in the kitchen with a super-long cord we could stretch down the hall for some privacy. It would have been nearly impossible for a pervert to see me in public somewhere and then track down information to find where I lived so they could call and harass me on my family's landline telephone. Now, however, most kids have their own phones starting in elementary. Many kids have social media profiles starting in middle school and have been interacting with the known and unknown world online for years. Now parents have to deal with the scary world outside, thanks to the 24/7 news telling us about every kidnapping, murder, rape, and other awful thing that happens to kids like ours; AND we have to deal inside our homes with the very real terror of which scary strangers might be lurking behind the profile pictures of harmless-looking guys and girls on Instagram, SnapChat, and whatever other apps are popular with kids these days. With the push of a couple of buttons, a predator can create an online persona complete with a dreamy-looking photo they copied from Google Images. What appears to be a hunky 15-year old could actually be a 53-year old sitting in his mother's basement in his underwear watching child pornography on his laptop while posting comments on your child's Instagram photo.
What's even worse, with apps like NameTag, that same creepy adult can snap a photo of a child at the mall or school event (without the child even knowing what has happened) and use facial recognition to easily find that child on social media. If the child has their own social media presence, this NSFS (Not-Safe-For-Schools) adult can then send the child messages and begin to befriend them in a manner that seems safe at first before becoming terrifyingly-manipulative. That's a nightmare scenario for sure and probably isn't happening on some rampant basis, but it makes parenting feel more impossible as we face technology that puts predators inside our homes on the latest technology our children have begged us for because "everyone has a smartphone, Mom" and "everyone is on SnapChat, Dad".
The 24/7 news coverage of all the terribleness of the world plus my own knowledge that my children are so vulnerable on the internet has made parenting in the 2010's feel terrifying. And the spinning-out-of-control feeling we have about our inability to protect our children makes us keep them close in all other areas that we can control. Even living in a relatively-safe neighborhood with no registered sex offenders living close (I checked), I don't let my children hang out for long periods outside of my presence. If they are hanging out with the neighbors (who we have met and know their parents), we still make them check in with us every half hour or so, either through a text or by coming back home. We don't even let them spend the night with people we don't know really well.
I'm trying to have a reasonable sense of balance in letting my children experience the world in an age-appropriate way. As much as it scares me, they must step out on their own two feet if I have any hope of them ever being well-adjusted adults. To help me let go a little, I've tried to remember that my own childhood had tons of risky behaviors that I navigated without falling into any terrible traps. When I look back at some of the things I learned on the school bus or at sleepovers, I'm kind of appalled -- and I know my parents would be, too, if they knew. By the time I was 18, I had gotten a very thorough education in all manner of shocking things. Most of my close friends were having a ton of sex in high school and were not shy in talking about everything from positions to "toys" to the best method for having sex without getting caught. And, yet, I stuck to my values and made wise choices, even as a teenager in the midst of all that influence.
I'm not naive to realize that my own children are going to get the same kind of "education" from their own peers, too. No matter how I might try to protect them, they will be influenced by the people around them to know things I don't want them to know yet and my daughters will feel pressured to do those things, too. All I can do is build values into my girls about sex, drugs, alcohol, and their own priceless self-worth. If they don't have values driving their choices, there's no amount of parental helicoptering that can save them from the scary things of the world.
Can I protect them with some degree of choices on my part? Sure. I can monitor their online presence and help them navigate tricky situations. I can also teach them about personal safety so they know how to handle people who might want to do harm (like a coach who might put his hands on them in a sexual way). They can be trained not to interact with strangers on the internet by teaching them that sexual predators are sometimes hiding behind safe-looking photos of kids on social media. But no amount of effort on my part can protect them 100% and I have to be prepared to cross that bridge with my children if poor choices (theirs or someone else's) cause them harm.
Sometimes I wish we could go to the land of Back in My Day because it seemed so simple to hop on a bike and ride to Marcie or Cindy or John's house for an afternoon of blissfully-unaware childhood playtime. It seems like childhood is so much easier to navigate without the constant pressure of social media lurking right at their fingertips. Since we can't go back (and I really don't want to go back to the days of mullet haircuts and avocado green appliances), it's time to let God care for my children as we navigate the 2010's together.
During the era of life known as Back in My Day, parents didn't seem to have a lot going on from a helicoptering standpoint. My mom was a mostly stay-at-home-mom who did freelance writing for a couple of local newspapers and magazines. When I look back at childhood, I definitely remember her being around and doing things for us or with us. For example, I remember summer adventures to the Summer Movie Program at the local cinema where they showed definitely-not-first-run children's movies for free once a week. We watched movies like "Pippi Longstocking", "Benji", "Apple Dumpling Gang", "Herbie", and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks". After the movie we would always have a picnic at one of the local parks in town. My mom was also a big fan of taking us to the library. Our town had five or six libraries, so my mom made it a habit of taking us to a different one each week because variety is the spice of life. She made cookies and cupcakes and, my favorite, homemade popsicles.
As great as my mom was, however, she was pretty much like most 1970's and 80's parents I knew: very hands-off. Lest you think I mean neglectful, I don't. Let me explain a typical day-off from school at my house during that era. My brother and I could sleep until we woke up on our own and then we made ourselves breakfast, usually something like a slice of buttered toast or a bowl of Cheerios. Then we'd get dressed in clothes that we could get dirty in and head out on our bikes to see what the neighbor kids were up to. We lived in the country and our closest kid neighbors we liked were at least mile away. My brother and I put in many miles on the dirty farm roads around our neighborhood. If the first neighbor kid wasn't available, we'd power on to the next one. Or, better yet, we would find the first neighbor kid at home and invite him to join us as we headed together to find out which other neighbors were around.
Here's the hands-off part of the story: we didn't have cell phones and we didn't use the neighbor kids' home phones to check-in with our mom. We would be gone for hours at a time and our mom had no idea where we were. If we didn't eventually come home for a meal, she would have started making calls, but until then she was never too concerned that we were dead in a ditch somewhere or kidnapped or experimenting with drugs. So long as we eventually came home and no neighbor adults called to say we were in trouble, that was fine by my mom.
Here's the thing: there really wasn't much to worry about. My mom knew all the neighbors and they knew her. It wasn't a mystery that we were probably either at a neighbor's house or on our bike somewhere in between. She wasn't concerned about evil touching our safe little corner of the world.
Back in the 1970's and 80's the world just felt more safe. Sure, there were the occasional news stories that broke into the national spotlight about kids who had been kidnapped or of families who had been murdered. But those stories didn't dominate any sort of national news conversation because 24-hour cable news wasn't a thing yet in the 1970's and 80's. News commentators didn't have to fill up endless hours with stories told over and over from new angles with increasingly salacious details to keep viewers tuned in. And there was no internet yet -- and certainly no social media -- to pass frightening stories along and keep everyone terrified of the outside world. There was no website to track the whereabouts of all the sex offenders in our town. Our 1970's parents were blissfully ignorant of the dangers around us and that's why they weren't worried about the hours we spent outside of their presence as we adventured with the neighbors.
Fast-forward to the decade we are now in (The 2010's? Is that what you call it?). Now, every terrible thing that happens to children in the world is available for public consumption all the time. There are Amber Alerts sent directly to our phones, social media warnings about kids being snatched from Target, fears of transexual predators lurking in public bathrooms, seemingly-weekly school shootings, high profile pedophile coaches/team doctors/teachers, and terrifying tales of human sex trafficking rampant in even the most idyllic towns. If you read or watch the news, this is a terrifying time to be a child because the coverage makes it seem that danger is literally lurking around every corner.
Back in My Day, kids weren't as accessible as they are now. In my house growing up, we had a phone in the kitchen with a super-long cord we could stretch down the hall for some privacy. It would have been nearly impossible for a pervert to see me in public somewhere and then track down information to find where I lived so they could call and harass me on my family's landline telephone. Now, however, most kids have their own phones starting in elementary. Many kids have social media profiles starting in middle school and have been interacting with the known and unknown world online for years. Now parents have to deal with the scary world outside, thanks to the 24/7 news telling us about every kidnapping, murder, rape, and other awful thing that happens to kids like ours; AND we have to deal inside our homes with the very real terror of which scary strangers might be lurking behind the profile pictures of harmless-looking guys and girls on Instagram, SnapChat, and whatever other apps are popular with kids these days. With the push of a couple of buttons, a predator can create an online persona complete with a dreamy-looking photo they copied from Google Images. What appears to be a hunky 15-year old could actually be a 53-year old sitting in his mother's basement in his underwear watching child pornography on his laptop while posting comments on your child's Instagram photo.
What's even worse, with apps like NameTag, that same creepy adult can snap a photo of a child at the mall or school event (without the child even knowing what has happened) and use facial recognition to easily find that child on social media. If the child has their own social media presence, this NSFS (Not-Safe-For-Schools) adult can then send the child messages and begin to befriend them in a manner that seems safe at first before becoming terrifyingly-manipulative. That's a nightmare scenario for sure and probably isn't happening on some rampant basis, but it makes parenting feel more impossible as we face technology that puts predators inside our homes on the latest technology our children have begged us for because "everyone has a smartphone, Mom" and "everyone is on SnapChat, Dad".
The 24/7 news coverage of all the terribleness of the world plus my own knowledge that my children are so vulnerable on the internet has made parenting in the 2010's feel terrifying. And the spinning-out-of-control feeling we have about our inability to protect our children makes us keep them close in all other areas that we can control. Even living in a relatively-safe neighborhood with no registered sex offenders living close (I checked), I don't let my children hang out for long periods outside of my presence. If they are hanging out with the neighbors (who we have met and know their parents), we still make them check in with us every half hour or so, either through a text or by coming back home. We don't even let them spend the night with people we don't know really well.
I'm trying to have a reasonable sense of balance in letting my children experience the world in an age-appropriate way. As much as it scares me, they must step out on their own two feet if I have any hope of them ever being well-adjusted adults. To help me let go a little, I've tried to remember that my own childhood had tons of risky behaviors that I navigated without falling into any terrible traps. When I look back at some of the things I learned on the school bus or at sleepovers, I'm kind of appalled -- and I know my parents would be, too, if they knew. By the time I was 18, I had gotten a very thorough education in all manner of shocking things. Most of my close friends were having a ton of sex in high school and were not shy in talking about everything from positions to "toys" to the best method for having sex without getting caught. And, yet, I stuck to my values and made wise choices, even as a teenager in the midst of all that influence.
I'm not naive to realize that my own children are going to get the same kind of "education" from their own peers, too. No matter how I might try to protect them, they will be influenced by the people around them to know things I don't want them to know yet and my daughters will feel pressured to do those things, too. All I can do is build values into my girls about sex, drugs, alcohol, and their own priceless self-worth. If they don't have values driving their choices, there's no amount of parental helicoptering that can save them from the scary things of the world.
Can I protect them with some degree of choices on my part? Sure. I can monitor their online presence and help them navigate tricky situations. I can also teach them about personal safety so they know how to handle people who might want to do harm (like a coach who might put his hands on them in a sexual way). They can be trained not to interact with strangers on the internet by teaching them that sexual predators are sometimes hiding behind safe-looking photos of kids on social media. But no amount of effort on my part can protect them 100% and I have to be prepared to cross that bridge with my children if poor choices (theirs or someone else's) cause them harm.
Sometimes I wish we could go to the land of Back in My Day because it seemed so simple to hop on a bike and ride to Marcie or Cindy or John's house for an afternoon of blissfully-unaware childhood playtime. It seems like childhood is so much easier to navigate without the constant pressure of social media lurking right at their fingertips. Since we can't go back (and I really don't want to go back to the days of mullet haircuts and avocado green appliances), it's time to let God care for my children as we navigate the 2010's together.
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