I was at a birthday party for a friend's wife this past Friday. It was a small gathering of adults at their house, most of them with kids in tow. These friends of ours have a son who is in our son's kindergarten class. These two kindergarteners are quickly becoming good friends and being that we live right around the corner from them, it is working out quite nicely. There is a big difference, however, in how we choose to raise our children (both them and us have daughters about the same age as well). They, along with many of our other friends, have chosen to introduce technology to their kids including TV, video games, iPads, and iPhones. Nothing wrong with that on my end. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't judge anyone for the way they choose to raise their children. Another difference in the way we raise our children is when we introduce organized sports to our children. Their son has been playing baseball for a couple of years now whereas ours just plays with a plastic bat and ball in our backyard. I have nothing against sports either, but at least for our son, he can wait out one more year before getting involved in a sports team. We at our house believe in letting our son be a kid, without worry about commitment at this point, and just having the time to play outside doing what he wants. For those that don't understand why we raise our children the way we are, it is interesting to see the questions that we get. Our friend's wife, who the birthday party was for, at one point was talking to me about our sons. We were talking about how they were becoming good friends and bantering back and forth. At one point, she verified that we don't do video games or TV at our house. I affirmed that. Then she asked if I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep him sheltered from all of it.
I could see where she was coming from with the question, but it was an angle I hadn't thought about. From an outside perspective, it can seem like we our sheltering our kids and being over protective of them. The only thing I feel we are protecting them against is perhaps growing up too quickly at such a young age. I have nothing against TV and video games. I actually loved playing video games for a long time, and I enjoyed watching TV when we had one up in our house. Yet, the content that comes through video games and the TV is not what I want our son exposed to on a regular basis. I want him to be an actual child, with childhood concerns about when he has to come inside for dinner and whether or not he can go play in the rain. I don't him plastered to a TV discussing video game strategy with is friends while the sun is shining outside. I tried explaining all this in much fewer words by simply saying, "I know I can't keep him away from that stuff forever, and that is not my intention. I know he will play video games and watch TV, just not in our house right now." She suggested at that point that maybe her son could be the one to introduce video games and all that "stuff" to our son. I agreed. If our son wants to go to his friends house and play video games instead of playing outside, then so be it, however, it just won't be an everyday thing and it will not change how we operate at our house. I just found it funny how she suggested that her son can be the one to introduce this stuff. It's like its some taboo way of living that we embrace, the dark side of keeping technology from our kids. I actually think it will be benefit our kids more later on as they can develop their creativity and personality without over handed influence of our culture that sometimes tends to get a little heavy through video games and TV. It is all an experiment of sorts, every parents slightly different way of raising their kids that will only bear fruit as time passes.
Over protective? OK, in regards to technology, perhaps. Yet, if the parents who would say that we are overprotective in general saw the opportunities we gave our kids to explore, learn, and fail, they might think otherwise. On the flip side of "protecting" them from technology, we allow our kids the freedom in our house to explore, to help cook, to get what they need when they need it. We are attempting to raise independent little humans. Our son, at 5, while not an expert with a steak knife, can use one when he wishes, as long as he is careful. We are also showing our daughter how to use one so that in another year or so, she can get her own steak knife and cut her own food for meals. Similarly, they are allowed to climb on stools to get what they need, allowed to climb ladders outside, to vacuum around the house, to hold the small jackhammer I own, to help cut the grass, to dig in the dirt, to attempt to pick up every worm and "save" it, to climb rocks and trees, to roam the woods behind our house, to go fishing with sticks in our lawn. We allow them a very generous amount of free reign in our house, provided that they do things safely. That is our one requirement. If they aren't being safe, we show them how to be safe and let them go again and learn. They will fall, they will cut themselves, they will learn the hard way sometimes. Our job is to keep them as safe as possible while giving them the opportunity to learn. I wonder how many of the parents who would say we are protective with exposure to technology allow their children the freedom that we allow ours. It would interesting to see. But for now, we carry on our lifestyle, they carry on theirs, and as they intersect, we shall see how things progress.
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