Just a few weeks ago, I used this space to wonder how many afterschools are too many afterschools for the kids. Turns out, I love them, although I do understand the need for relaxation, unstructured play and the occasional afternoon spent doing absolutely nothing. Today, however, I'd like to dissect another sort of children's outing, one that I've come to define as regular life.
Here's where the thought came from: last month, I took my 7-year-old daughter to her first Broadway show (Wicked, if you were wondering) and, the following morning, my husband remarked that she suddenly seemed bigger, more mature, more…not 7? It wasn't the first time we'd noticed a transformation of the sort. It happens after vacations, for example, or weekends spent doing things we don't ordinarily do during the week: going out to a nice dinner, driving into Manhattan and simply walking around, even visiting a bookstore.
These aren't particularly extraordinary experiences. In fact, they're the sorts of things adults do without thinking twice about them. But I've come to suspect that exposing children to this kind of ordinary life, outside the carefully constructed universe of afterschools, playgrounds and kid-friendly activities, is precisely what growing up entails: doing things, experiencing things, being part of a world that doesn't necessarily revolve around them.
Not everyone agrees with me (as usual, I should add). I have a friend who refuses to take his children out to dinner because they "can't behave." I must say that, whenever I've forced him to bring them along, they've certainly behaved better than my own children, so perhaps he's doing something right. His argument, however, is that taking children somewhere they don't know how to behave will inevitably put him in a bad mood, which will then prevent him from properly catering to their needs.
Why put everyone through that? Well, I retort, how exactly are they supposed to learn to behave in situations they've never been allowed to experience? And therein lies what I think is a peculiar contradiction in modern parenting: we expect children to acquire the skills necessary to participate in the world before we actually let them participate in it.
We want them to sit through dinner before taking them to restaurants, appreciate culture before bringing them to the theater, and develop independence while keeping their lives organized around environments specifically designed for them. My own mother peripherally agrees with my friend. "You guys were always home after school," she reminds me whenever she calls and hears my children asking (screaming) about what we're doing that afternoon.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
