What Happened When I Parented My Kids Like I Was Parented

We all know parenting norms have changed. Much of what used to be acceptable for our parents, is now frowned upon… and perhaps rightfully so.

We live in a dangerous world. Everywhere you turn, there they are predators and ne’er-do-wells lurking behind bushes and inside windowless conversion vans. They scour neighborhood parks and playgrounds while plotting their next assaults on our innocent offspring.

Today, it isn’t safe to leave our children in the locked car, not even for the brief moment it takes to run into the gas station and pay the cashier for our fuel on a balmy weekday afternoon.

Today, it’s not safe to let our children take off on their bikes unsupervised, free to traverse the perilous wasteland that is the sidewalks of sleepy suburban blocks.

Today, it’s no longer safe to permit our children to run wild and unrestrained in our own back yards or in those of seemingly harmless neighbor’s yards, while playing hide-and-seek or freeze tag and using the inventions of their minds to build robots or forts or lemonade stands or snowmen.

It’s not safe because they would be unprotected against the unnatural whims of sexual predators and Tentanus-infested playground equipment.

Today, it’s not safe to trust our children’s instincts — to trust that the direction and expectations we bestow upon them will help shape their choices and behavior, or that the mistakes they do make will serve as hard-won lessons for their futures.

It’s not safe, parents. The world is simply not safe.

And because our world is not safe, it’s just not the same:

• Our parents shoved us outside for the day and told us not to come back until dinner time. But now we must schedule our children’s every move, ushering them from karate class to soccer practice, from piano lessons to ballet recitals, taking care not to expose them to the seedy underbelly of free-range childhood.

• Our parents required us to fill our time with nature and imagination. But now we must fill our children’s time with things: electronic things, sporting things, organized things and material things.

• Our parents expected us to navigate our worlds independently. But now we must structure and guide our children through their worlds, keeping them at arm’s length always, sheltered from the Bad Things: the name-calling, the knee-scraping, the mischief-seeking, the boundary-testing — for as long as the umbilical cord will hold.

• Our parents encouraged us to explore without anyone batting an eyelash. But now we must protect — always protect! — lest we be arrested for letting our nine-year-olds walk to school or interrogated by Child Protective Services for allowing our seven-year-olds to snooze in the SUV while we drop a letter in the mail slot at the post office.

I know this from personal experience. You see, I made a mistake, fellow parents. I embraced ’80s parenting philosophies. And this is what happened:

My children had fun.

They ran around the subdivision until their lungs burned. They dug in the dirt and got mud on their clothes. They swung on the neighborhood swing set until their toes almost touched the sky. They counted clouds and named trees. They made new friends and learned how to compromise. They created. They problem-solved.

They lived, openly and unrestricted by the dictum of a clock or a strategically crafted agenda.

I embraced ’80s parenting, folks. And my children will never be the same.

Lola Lolita is a wife, mother, wine lover, and chronic sufferer from anxiety, immaturity, and children. Find her in her books: Who Pooped on the Corpses? And Other Pressing Life Concerns, I Still Just Want to Pee Alone, and Scary Mommy’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays, on her blog, Sammiches and Psych Meds, and on Facebook and Twitter.