Lost Childhood Freedoms

Do you remember the feeling you had when you were a kid and you were riding your bike? The wind was in your face and the hot sun beating down, speeding away or perhaps swaying back and forth or maybe practicing wheelies. You were in your own little world where there were no parents or siblings or even friends to bother you or pick a fight or break the silence with their talking. Nope, instead the world consisted of just you and your bike.

I thought of that because today we are never on our own and out of touch with the world as we were when we were kids 20+ years ago. As adults we are plugged into the world 24/7 thanks to cell phones, blackberries, PCs, and round the clock cable news. And I doubt if even kids today will ever know that kind of freedom; as they are always carrying their cell phones too.

I feel sorry for these kids today. Every 12 year old needs to think that they have eluded their parent’s grasp and are free to do whatever it is 12 year olds want to do. My parents probably never knew that my friend and I would save our pennies then would bike a few miles away to a park where we would rent a little row boat. We would row out to the middle of the lake then stretch out in the boat; eat our forbidden Twinkies and simply float around; daydreaming, looking at the clouds while trailing a hand in the water and of course talking and giggling. It was harmless but to us it was magical as it was our little secret getaway.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine that idyllic summer scene interrupted by the insistent ring of a cell phone. To have that quiet escape broken by a mother’s interrogation of where are you, what are you doing, who are you with, when will you be home, etc. etc. Yet that is now the every day life for children today.

Perhaps parents reading this would be horrified if their 12 year olds went off on a similar little escapade. I am almost embarrassed to admit just how free we really were back then. (Oh my, I am turning into an old foggie complete with the prerequisite “In my day…”) Anyway, we were freer and less fearful than kids today. Take riding my bike for example. I had no helmet or pads and would have thought anyone wearing that stuff was a sissy. (Ok a part of me still thinks that!) I would think those funny little helmets were hot and would definitely interfere with the wind blowing through my hair.

I could, however, understand wearing a hardhat during my horseback riding lessons. But a bike? Over the years, I was thrown more times from a horse than a bike and yet even then I still never landed on my head. I wonder if making kids wear the helmets is also making them more fearful. Seems to me the kids of my childhood were fearless. I admit to a healthy respect and fear of falling from a horse but I never once worried about falling from a bike. I loved that bike. Yet making a child wear a helmet implicitly tells a child that riding a bike is dangerous; that you could fall and get hurt so be afraid and wear this helmet. How sad.

When I was young my sisters and I knew that we needed to be in whistle range. Mom had this very loud whistle and when it was time to come home she would stand on the front steps and call us with the whistle. So as long as we could still hear the whistle we were free to explore the neighborhood. When we were older we were given even more freedom. I had friends who lived a mile or more away and after getting permission would hop on my bike to go to their homes. No cell phones, just my trusty bike and I facing the world together.

Today my 11 year old niece is nervous about walking two blocks in her upscale residential neighborhood to her bus stop. (Although in her defense, this same young lady thinks nothing of hurling her body in flips while staying on a balance beam!) Nonetheless, she worries that maybe someone might try to kidnap her. Wow. Has the world changed that much? Were there not pedophiles when I was a child? I would think there were. I just wonder if no one talked about it back then, not even on the news. And so if you were ignorant then you could be carefree as ignorance truly is bliss.

Stranger – danger is what is drilled into today’s children. But the majority of strangers are not dangerous. The odds are that most children would go through their childhood and never meet a dangerous stranger. And yet they are taught to be afraid of all of them. How very sad. And think what they are missing by being scared to talk to an adult.

I worry that we are teaching our children to be afraid of life. Be afraid of your bike and wear a helmet. Be afraid of strangers and stay away. Be afraid of someone with the sniffles – you might catch the swine flu. Is this what Political Correctness is doing to our children? Making them afraid of life? What kind of grown ups will they become? What kind of America will we become? Now I think I am afraid….