I bet you didn’t know.
I’m reasonably certain that most kids know very little about their parents… most just assumed that they were born as adults and never were kids. This goes without saying that it includes me too, however, the difference is I know that my parents were “born as adults” and never were kids.
Of course this means that they weren’t certain of their lives at all points in them; they struggled to “figure is out” and even made mistakes… both large and small. Which also means that they didn’t listen to adults at the time and figured the adults wouldn’t understand their dilemma. And so the cycle goes.
I have seen the gambit of overly intrusive, helicopter parenting, to the complete abdication of parental responsibilities- and just letting the kids figure it out. I’m kind of in the middle, ok maybe more the helicopter to be honest. In 7th or 8th grade I took one of those standardized tests that was supposed to help kids know a certain direction in their lives, what they expressed interest in and what maybe they were good at. At the time I had an interest in being a veterinarian because I had a dog and I liked my dog and therefore would make a good vet. You get the point. Do you know what the results were? I was destined to be a good garbage man or a baker and to rethink my aspirations of being a veterinarian, by my test scores- that is exactly what the results told me, it wasn’t just hyperbole. At that age I was an average kid with average grades and didn’t know how to derive DNA from a fruit fly in science class– I couldn’t even spell DNA.
In 7th or 8th grade, how many kids know anything about anything? How many kids at that age have a good mechanical aptitude or whatever- “so what engine did you work on this weekend, Johnny?” We are all in the learning curve all the time and I have wondered what harm those tests did- dashing dreams because you don’t have the skills right then to do the thing you want to do right then. I would be interested to have a follow up study to those studies to show the predictions in 8th grade based on data and then reference the actual to what you are today.
Do my kids know that while growing up we had a canal in front of our house which was like the summer swimming pool. We would devise bike jumps and launch ourselves from the earthen ramp at extremely high rates of bicycle speeds into the raging torrent of the canal (in reality it was maybe 4 feet deep and was as placid as a blood hounds eyelids). Now a days they have government entities’ that tell all the scared little children and mothers to never look at a canal in the face or you will drown on the spot. Oh by the way the bike we would launch our bodies into the water had no seat and we crossed a main road to get there—as if the canal wasn’t dangerous in and of itself. Now would I do that now, (ok, maybe) but that was part of our growing up and we didn’t ascribe death around every corner—that was the duty of the parent for the most part, if they were paying attention to the 12 children that they had- figuring they had a certain acceptable loss ratio if they lost a kid or two.
Don’t think that we were smart either- we were just lucky and kids despite some of the silly risks we took, making it out in one piece most of the time. Now there was more than one occasion that we were “truly stupid” to be sure. Like the time we built a fort inside of the straw stack or haystack and used candles as our light source inside of the fort. Ok that truly was dumb… but again we made it out in one piece. I honestly don’t think my parents ever knew about that one or the neighbors either—which by the way was in their barn and in their haystack. We could have burned down the place and we could have been fried chicken as well. Just seemed like a good idea at the time.
There are tons of those stories floating around: stories of adventure, make believe, and missing the birthday movie party that was going to see “Gus” because I got there late. There are stories of triumph, like my interception at an Optimist Football game—I was a hero. There was the loss of my dog and heartbreak because Diane didn’t like me but liked Derrick instead- I have never spoke to him sinceJ. There were cousin parties, sleepovers and high adventures in the wilderness. There was my first deer, my dream of being a mountain man. There was my first sad little car. There were classes that I loved and classes that I hated and how I just about flunked out of Spanish. There are more, it just depends on how long you want to listen and maybe ask questions to those you call parents.
How much do you know about your parents? I bet you didn’t know…