Find Your Folks

When Ruby was a toddler I took her to an indoor gym class, to keep her moving in the cold winter. While she was climbing all over the equipment, another girl her age could neither climb up the very small ladder, nor slide down on her own. Her mother never let go of her hand, "helping" her all the time. The mother asked me why Ruby was so capable. My answer was, simple. Practice; allowing her to try.

This mother needed permission to let go. Seeing Ruby on the slide gave her more confidence to let her child try.

There is a notion I remember hearing when my kids were still too young for it to apply, that parents should look to local custom to help determine when to grant freedoms to their kids. That is, if the neighborhood kids are riding their bikes on their own at nine, then you know it's fine to let your kids do the same. Or, if most kids walk to middle school on their own, let you can feel comfortable letting your kids do it, too. The local custom part is important, as it acknowledges that what is normal in suburban New Jersey may be very different from the streets of Manhattan.

There's a community spirit to this reasoning, that puts the onus on making these leaps of faith--after all, letting our kids out of our sight can be seen as such a leap--on the shoulders of many families. The community spirit encourages families to trust each other, and to watch out for each other.

Parents using each other as guide-posts is a great way to work together to raise our children. But it can be hard to do this when there is little trust among parents, or when parents fear that only they can ensure the safety of their kids.

Once, years ago, my family was walking on the sidewalk with another family in a moderately busy area (not in NYC). The other family's child, age 4, rushed ahead with my kids, ages 4 and 6, who were playing, running, etc. My girls were used to walking behind us, in front of us, around us. Josh and I were watching them, but we did not insist that they hold our hands, except for crossing streets. The other family had different rules. The parents became furious with their child for running ahead and "not staying with them" -- i.e. doing exactly what we allowed ours to do all the time. I said "It's okay, we're watching them." But the parents shrugged us off, and punished their child anyway. They clearly didn't trust us, or our norms.

Without doubt, there are children who require special limits because of their own limitations. Know thy child, above all else. But this child seemed normal to me, capable and responsive. The parents' fear, and their need for obedience, were very different from our parental ethos.

Now that Bella and Ruby are walking to school on their own, I feel the tug of the variety of opinion on children's freedom. Some parents of similar-aged children bristle ("not my kid"). A few give their children more freedom than we do. There's no consensus.

So what gives? Aren't we parents supposed to be looking towards each other for guidance?

 I wonder if this is a New York City dilemma. After all, NYC is not a neighborhood in the traditional sense, in that it's so big and diverse. So, like in all other social spheres in this city, we need to go searching for our "neighbors"--the folks whose ways speak to us--and elect them as our community. I reckon this applies elsewhere, too.

When I need to, I find my free-range parenting friends to buck me up and give me support. One friend in particular, who has a slightly older child, tells me how it's done. She told me what to say to Bella before she took the subway by herself the first time, and how to prepare her for the what-ifs. She also told me that Bella could do it, just like her daughter had. And sure enough, Bella can. We all need friends like this! Parenting need not involve reinventing the wheel in each family. Wherever you are, find your folks.

This IS Vacation

So much on my mind this week...and it's the first time I've had a chance to sit down and say something. Maybe I should write something political, but my friends the columnists have done such a good job. So I'm not going to hold court here about the loss of the Voting Rights Act, the end of DOMA, the triumph of Wendy Davis, and the senate's bill giving hope at last for fair treatment of the undocumented.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the personal. Because I find myself in a strange predicament this week. I'm without two of my three kids, who are off at sleep-away camp. Like my two-year-old, I keep looking for them everywhere, and they're nowhere to be found. (Except, on occasion, on the camp website, where I may have the luck to find one or both of them deep in a selection of hundreds of photos. One mom noted on Facebook that she can recognize her kid by the corner of a shoe. It's an addiction. As soon as they're spotted, you want more. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.)

This is not the first time that they've both been away, or that I've been away from them. Last summer, Bella went to camp for one session, and Ruby overlapped with her for a week. But this year, Bella's away for 7 weeks, and Ruby for 4. That's a long time.

I was so harried moving, helping the kids finish school, and getting organized and packing for camp, that I didn't have much time to consider what it would be like with the kids gone. It was the day after they left that Josh said to me, "Why'd we have to send them away for so long?" [Some Israeli friends, who can't wrap their brains around the American institution of summer camp, jokingly chided that it's child abuse.]

Why, indeed? For one thing, they wanted to go. When I was a kid, camp was a given, not a choice. But I always said I wouldn't send my kids unless they wanted to go. My girls were SO EXCITED for camp. They woke up at 5 am the day they were leaving, like people do when they have to catch a plane for a long-anticipated trip. Looking at the photos, camp looks like one long vacation for those lucky kids. Like Club Med, without the parents at night.

I went to camp for seven summers as a camper, and three on staff, and there's no question that the experience shaped me. I made some of my deepest friends, and each summer had more memories by far than the school years in between. By the time I was in college I couldn't think of coming home for a summer. How would I cope just hanging out with my parents?

I think that now, more than ever, freedom for children is scarce. What a gift for a child to be sent off on her own for a few weeks, knowing that she's not really on her own at all. She has friends and counselors there to help her, coupled with increased incentive to figure things for herself, without Mom and Dad in the background. It's hard not knowing all the details of my kids' lives, but at the same time, it's a gift for them to learn self-reliance, and to find out all the ways in which they don't need me.

So what is a parent to do, with their kids gone? In all my summers at camp, I never thought for a moment about what it was like for my parents back at home. I guess I assumed it was one glorious kid-free vacation for them. Alas, my (pre-children) daydreams of summering in Tuscany while the kids are at camp was squashed by the reality of paying camp tuition. This really IS our vacation. For them, it's the time of their lives. For us, it's a few weeks to focus on the little one, and to be able to float by with less structure. We will all blink our eyes and find ourselves packing school backpacks, come September.