| A few thoughts on Children and Childhood |
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The Grey Area:
Have you ever noticed, to a child, everything is categorized as either black or white? There never seems to be a middle, a gray, area in which to
categorize anything further. I'm not sure when the gray area develops, at what age, only that it does. To a child, things seem to be right or
wrong, good or bad, funny or not funny, nice or not nice, cool or not cool, and so on.
A bad guy is, well, a BAD guy. Dad, on the other hand, is a good guy. A bad guy does things that are wrong. Dad does things that are right. (A
mom is another example of a good guy.) Thank God, children most often pretend to be the 'good' guy.
Teasing, even lighthearted teasing, isn't very funny to most children -- but simply say the word 'underpants' and they'll roll on the floor
laughing. The same can be said from the opposite angle, too. Something we adults consider to be not funny and even punishable -- "Who blew up
the marshmallow in the microwave!?" -- brings muffled giggles from the kid who's hiding-out in his room.
Consider smells and tastes. Nothing ever just smells or tastes 'okay' to a child. To a child, gasoline and flowers smell good, but feet and swiss
cheese smell terrible. Brussel sprouts and black jelly beans taste 'yukky', but chocolate cake? As my nephew used to say, "Geez oh man, I could
make a whole meal outta that!"
Let's take it a step further. Children like to have easy answers to most things. If there's no black or white explanation or a specific name
for something, they'll make one up for themselves by pretending. Here's an example: My five-year-old grandson, loves playing doctor with a
Bob the Builder doll. He had his toy medical kit out and all of the instruments laid out neatly on a table. I asked him what was wrong with Bob.
He told me Bob had a bad sickness in his herpodoffick and he was going to take it out with his mixafidgit and that would make Bob the Builder
all better.
A tree scratching at the window of a child's bedroom at night becomes a horrible snaggle-toothed monster. The child can't see the tree
branch. The monster is as real to him as the printing on this page and, until mommy explains otherwise, it really exists. As a matter of fact, it
will probably still be there until mommy tells the scary monster to go away.
Looking back, pretending was one of the funnest things about being a child. I loved pretending. I think I put more miles on my mother's broom
than she did as I clip-clopped up and down the sidewalk on my black and white pinto pony.
This brings me to the assumption that pretending must certainly be an indispensable precursor to the eventual gray area. When does
pretending stop and the gray area begin? I don't know. Sometime during the long road to getting older, life slowly expands beyond the black
and white. our tastes change, little mysteries are solved, and we find a lot of our questions can be answered in the encyclopedia.
We learn by experience that our parents are not perfect, the teacher doesn't have all the answers, and our friend will be hurt if we tell him
his feet smell. As our whole view of the world expands, we shed our childhood innocence. We pretend less and less and we gently enter into the
maturity of the gray area.
I still don't know when pretending stops, or if it ever does. I sure hope not. Heck, I'm still pretending that I'll win the lottery every week ...
No Pride in Prejudice:
Children aren’t born as bigots. Children are born into prejudice and become bigots. Was that too strong? I hope not, but I think sometimes you
have to be bold and upfront, especially when you feel strongly about something as important as social injustice and tolerance for people's
differences. Of course, this is only my personal opinion and you know what they say, “Opinions are like ... er ... noses. Everyone has one.”
I grew up in a small town in Ohio, right in the center of the state. Heck, it was so small that if my high school graduating class had more than
a hundred students in it, I’ll be a monkey’s aunt.
My hometown looked just like the town in the movie, "Back To The Future". We had a ten pin bowling alley, a quaint little Main Street
centered around a picturesque white-domed brick town hall building (yes, complete with a clock just like in the movie), a pool hall where the
rowdies hung out, a movie theater with 25-cent Saturday afternoon matinees, the pizza shop and root beer stand for dates, and the drive-in
movie -- but this was off-limits to most of us until we were almost grownups ourselves.
Other than the senior citizen trailer park down by the river, there wasn’t really a north or south side of the tracks in my hometown. What we
did have was an area just east of town where most of the rowdies lived. Of course, not everyone who lived there was a rowdie, obviously, and
Lord knows, there are rowdies in every socioeconomic group everywhere.
Anyway, in my hometown, the rowdies were the tough kids who were always in trouble with the law. How they were used as an example by our
parents or anyone in authority was like nowadays when people say, “You’d better be good or the Boogie Man will get you ...” just change it a
little and what we heard from our parents was, “You’d better be good or you’ll end up as a rowdie! For most of us, that was enough for us to
mend our ways. Those kids were the real town toughies, the bullies in school who beat you up, and the ones we most wanted to stay away from.
Isn’t it shameful that the color of a person’s skin, what their sexual preference is, how rich or poor they are, or what their religious beliefs
might be, have all become so much more significant to us than the behavior of the rowdies in our communities? Sometimes I think the whole
world has gone nuts. It’s depressing to know that prejudice causes more hurt and resentment than crime does on our city streets. I would
love to go back to a simpler, more gentle time when the town's tough rowdies were the ones we didn’t want our children and grandchildren to
play with ...
Hurt: It doesn't discriminate
Hurt is something I think everyone can agree on. It comes in all ages and it comes in all sizes. Hurt doesn’t discriminate by age, skin color,
ethnic group, or by sex. Hurt means pain, plain and simple, and it’s either physical or emotional.
When our children are small, it’s so easy to fix the hurts. Most boo boos are physical and only require a little rinsing with water, some of
Mommy’s ‘red paint’ (Mercurochrome), and a Bandaid to keep all the blood inside so it won't all run out. Add a gentle kiss, and it’s simple to be
a hero when our children are small.
As our children get older, their hurts get bigger, too. These hurts are based more on feelings than the fall-down-go-boom hurt. As parents and
grandparents, our job becomes more difficult. Hurt now takes more of our time and requires a lot more patience. We have to add other
elements that aren’t needed with ordinary boo boos. We have to explain things: Not everyone we meet will like us; other kids don’t always play
fair; the teacher is human, too, and yes, she might have a favorite student that isn't you. We also have to teach the child how to help himself
make things get better.
It’s harder to explain that kind of hurt, too. Children want to know "why". Why don’t some children play fair? Why would someone say or do
something to hurt them when they didn’t do anything to deserve it? It becomes even more challenging, when teaching children that two wrongs
don’t make a right and it’s wrong to retaliate. As grownups, it’s more difficult helping these hurts get better, and it’s not as easy to be the
hero any more.
We spend their entire childhoods telling them to be nice; be truthful; don’t hit; do unto others the way you want them to do unto you; if you
can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all; and my personal favorite, and the one my mother used a lot when we were growing up: Say
what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.
When you think about it, hurt really doesn’t get any easier with age. It doesn’t matter how old we are, it still hurts to have someone say
something mean to us, or about us, behind our backs, especially when it isn’t true. It also hurts not to get that promotion we’ve been working
our butt off for. And it really hurts when the person we love, loves someone else.
As a grownup, I don’t pretend to understand the ‘why‘, which makes it even more difficult to try and explain it to a child. Maybe we could tell
them the people who hurt them are so unhappy with their lives that they need to make those around them just as miserable, or maybe that they’
re trying to boost their own feelings of insecurity. What it comes down to is a desperate cry for attention. Negative attention, even though
destructive and self-defeating, is still attention after all. No one, young or old, wants to be ignored.
In my humble opinion, sometimes the best thing we can advise our children or grandchildren to do is, “Say nothing at all. Just walk away.”
Pretending:
As anyone who knows me can attest, I love writing for and about children. They fascinate me. They have such an innocent view of their world
and their surroundings. I love their unpredictable nature, their imaginations, and I especially love their passion for pretending. It’s like a
profession -- something that all children do so well.
Most grownups tend to think of it as playing, but stop and watch preschool children sometime as they pretend. They work hard at it as they
rehearse and polish their growing skills at doing grownup things. They’re forever trying on new experiences, right along with Mommy’s or
Daddy’s clothes and shoes.
Whether you're aware of it or not, we grownups still pretend. After all, isn’t that what a dream, a daydream or a fantasy is? None of those
are real either, but they’re still pretending. Well, at least mine are.
Only in a dream, can I fly, soaring above the trees and looking down on friends and family. Only in a dream, can I walk through town and look
down to see five, ten, or twenty-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk in plain sight just waiting for me to pick 'em up and stuff 'em in my pockets.
Only in a dream, will I be chased by a hungry tiger and not be able to run because my feet are like lead and they won’t move. Or worse yet, I’m
able to run, but I’m running in slow motion! And only in my dreams would Tom Selleck and I -- oh never mind..
Is there anyone who hasn’t fantasized about picking the winning Powerball number? Can't you almost feel the rush when you secretly plan what
you'll do with your winnings? How about that first warm and sunny day of spring? You look out your office window and ‘see’ yourself walking in
the woods, or fishing in a boat on the lake. Or maybe in your fantasy, you’re out driving your little red sports car with the top down and the
wind is blowing your hair ... heck, in a daydream, you can see yourself just about anywhere else but there in your stuffy office, looking out a
dirty window with three hours left till quitting time. Almost everyone has daydreamed about getting a raise ... or fantasized about telling the
boss where to go because you didn’t get the raise. I think it’s safe to say then, whether in a dream, a daydream or a fantasy, even as
grownups, we pretend.
Hey, I have to go now. My daughter just got here with my grandsons. To the world, I’m Grammy and I’m gonna be babysitting for a few hours.
But just between you and me, today we’re really pirates. We’ve made plans to draw up a treasure map and they said I get to be Captain Hook
this time! That's good, because I was gettin' pretty tired of always bein' Tinker Bell …
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