Hatchets, Fire, and Other Fun Parenting Techniques

Over the last few weeks a few of my friends on “The Facebook” have posted an article from The Atlantic entitled “The Overprotected Kid” by Hanna Rosin.

The article centers on “playgrounds” in North Wales, UK that are essentially a junk heap of objects that children can play in. The idea is that if children are able to tackle seemingly dangerous scenarios (building forts, lighting fires, etc.) they will better understand the mechanics of such things and gain confidence. The article’s tagline states, “A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.”

Unsurprisingly the article has gained some attention and thus I see it posted by varying groups of my Facebook friends. Being at an age (25) where I have friends both still in college and reaching well into adulthood I have an opportunity to see decades of opinions. And, consequently, I see and hear a lot on the topic of “parenting techniques.”

And parenting techniques, quite frankly, baffle me. The easy argument would be: I am not a parent. But more than that the topic seeps into a greater world view that I just don’t understand.

Having a “parenting technique” seems to be something new since I was a child. A quick guess would be that this has to do with technology. In the same way that teenage girls take 100 selfies to get just the right one, mothers and fathers are saving those sunlit living room photos for the next blog post on whatever Christian or Hipster website they blog through. And every other parent is reading it and seeing their inferiority. So they, and consequently all of us, overanalyze everything.

And it drives me crazy.

I just don’t believe that my parents (or generations before them) had a “technique” in raising us. OF COURSE they had rights and wrongs. There was a reason my parents did not homeschool us, that we attended cultural events regularly, that we were not allowed to watch TV every day or allowed to talk back. But I think my parents saw that as something they dealt with as it came- knowing they wanted to instill good moral values and respectful children. What I see now is a crazed attempt to plan a perfect child who grows into a depression-and-anxiety-free adult.

So back to the article. A playground where children can play with stuff and light fires with minimal supervision.

Sure, fine. Except I don’t understand why it is necessary for so many of the folks who posted this article.

The article focuses on a middle-class populated area. There really isn’t space for kids to “spread their wings.” Instead the crappy alternative is a pile of junk. Scraps and trash litter the floor, rotting couches strewn in the photos. This might be the sad alternative to those kids but my friends posting it are from rural West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and even here.

So I find myself baffled and frustrated. Frustrated because I think if we stopped overanalyzing things and let things happen we would end up with kids who love the outdoors and express empathy for fellow human beings. Baffled because I can’t imagine a parent who thinks putting their children in a caged area with controlled fire is a better courage builder than exploring the woods or making a friend from a different social, economic, or racial background.

There are things to worry about. OF COURSE THERE ARE. Kidnapping is terrifying and so is hitting your head. But as the article points out- that stuff has not stopped since we began over-analyzing and implementing these “parenting techniques.”

It makes me so grateful for my childhood and how I was raised. My parents both worked, we all went to public school in a poor area. We were bound to do stupid things and get knocked around a bit. I had well-educated interesting GOOD parents and a stable home. But not everyone around me did and so I inherited some of those bruises too which I count only as good.

When he was 8 my parents bought my brother a hatchet-yes A HATCHET. He and his friends would go into the woods by themselves to hack away at old logs. My sister, being our extrovert, would join with masses of bored teenagers in the evenings looking for things to do.

We were expected to call if we were going to miss dinner and to do well in school. We were expected to sit quietly in church and concerts. My parents were stringent but we were allowed to explore our world as best we could.

And perhaps more importantly than the freedom given us in our own backyard was the freedom given us with our friends. Occasionally our parents would question the quality of a person of interest but generally they respected our judgment.

I learned as much in the broken-down trailers and smoke-filled homes of my friends as I have anywhere. I learned of my privilege. I learned to help out in scary situations and how to cope. I learned that kids with reduced lunches had them for a reason. I learned that fathers that were scary went hand-in-hand with mothers that were frightened and much of my classmate’s life would be spent trying to gingerly navigate that. I learned that poverty and hungry and fear and neglect and abuse were all rolled into a crazy cycle.

I am surprised that these kinds of risks are not mentioned in this article since I see them wrapped into the same kind of over-protection it’s talking about. And I see it wrapped in the same kinds of “parenting techniques.”

I know these things are risky. There is really horrible stuff that can happen. But freedom to explore, befriend and fumble creates fiber, embeds humanity and opens eyes. Just like we need exposure to antibodies to create immunities we need experience to grabble with life.

Often people say “when you have kids you will understand.” And maybe that’s part of the problem, this belief that our kid somehow has a chance to be THE BEST EVER. I just hope if that day ever comes I can take a breath, hand over a bag of gluten-free vegan kale chips, and tell my kid to come back before it gets dark. Oh – and no fire, just no.