When do you let go? It’s a question best answered in hindsight because when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to even know that you need to let go. The answer is, begin at the beginning and keep on going. When your child begins crawling, make your home safe, clear the decks and let him (or her) go. By the time he’s old enough to dress himself he knows the difference between hot and cold, so let him choose his own clothes. If he dresses inappropriately, then the next time round he will pay more attention to what he’s choosing. Teach him about crossing roads safely and begin by watching while he practices on small roads. It’s not one large letting go, but a series of them and each one should suit the right time and the right occasion.
In 2008 a mum called Lenore Skenazy wrote an article about letting go for the New York Sun that caused a stir with a bunch of other mums. I first read about her when she came to Australia in 2010 to sell her book, Free Range Kids. The book was a result of the 2008 experience. Ms Skenazy’s child had begged her to ‘leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own’, and she obliged.
Skenazy had allowed her then 9 year old son to travel the subway alone and make his own way home. ‘One sunny Sunday’ she left him at Bloomingdales armed with 20 dollars, a map, a subway ticket and her blessing. She scoffed at the idea that strangers were lurking nearby just waiting to ‘abduct’ her ‘adorable child.’ It was a strategy calculated to make her detractors feel silly. We must be neurotic is the inference, if we believe that until a child is old enough to protect himself from cunning predators it’s our duty to vigilant on their behalf. I wasn’t convinced by most of Skenazy’s flip justifications and contradictions. She trusted her son to negotiate his way home safely, but worried that he’d lose a cell phone if she provided him with one. It was his first excursion alone but she didn’t think it appropriate to ‘trail her son like a ‘mommy private eye’, New York was hardly ‘downtown Baghdad’ so by comparison NY must be safe. I don’t think Skenazy is a bad mother. I just see her as somebody at the other end of the parenting spectrum. There are the overprotective hovering mums at one end and those like Skenazy at the other. The rest of us are in-betweeners muddling along the best we can. We don’t pretend we know it all; it’s not possible given that we’re rank beginners when our first child arrives. Like any other worthwhile profession, there’s a learning curve involved to good parenting.
Three decades ago my five year old son had already ‘figured out’ how to get home on his own, ‘no problem’, he said, or something like it, I’m paraphrasing as I wasn’t listening at the time. Most young mums tend to zone out occasionally if they value their sanity. We had been walking to and from school all year. It was only a 20 minute walk, but there was a busy highway to negotiate. In hindsight (and ain’t that a grand thing) I should have taken more notice because halfway through the school year, David did walk home by himself.
I was only five minutes late, for heaven’s sake. I took the bus to catch up time and when I arrived, David had left. He had hiked his school bag higher on his shoulder and walked confidently out the front gate along with his peers and their parents.
I scoured the streets then made my way home. My neighbour came out of her house holding the hand of a safe but teary David. He’d been standing outside our front door crying so our neighbour had taken him in and plied him with milk and scones.
I was pretty teary myself and immensely relieved. I hugged David then shook him and asked what had possessed him. It was a spur of the moment decision that could have taken a scary direction, one that doesn’t bear considering. The only good thing that had come out of that event was a lesson learned that thankfully hadn’t proved disastrous.
Given a couple of extra years and David would have come home with friends and his younger brother for company, there’s safety in numbers. He would have a couple of years’ worth of life experience under his belt and the road rules down pat.
If you tell a five year old child not to talk to strangers, he will nod as if he understands, except that in his mind a stranger has fangs and claws. Even if you tell him that a stranger could be a smiling stranger who offers him sweets and ice cream a child is used to doing what he’s told to by adults. What hope would he have had if somebody had forced him into a car?
In January this year a man attempted to abduct a 10 year old boy from a car park in Melbourne’s south-east. This boy was waiting for his mother in the family car when he was approached by a man who offered him lollies. When the boy refused to come with him the man tried to pull the boy from the car. He was unsuccessful that time. But if this man had pulled harder or persisted it could have had a negative ending for that boy and his family.
Adults make hundreds of decisions every day based on life experience and even then they can’t count on getting it right every time. How can you expect it of a five or even a nine year old? Every parent has a responsibility to keep his or her children safe until they’re ready to do it on their own.
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