I had one of those, “I guess I’m getting older” moments a few minutes ago. I was reading this article on safety of children that went on to emphasize that parents today might be a bit too worried about child abductions when they should be a little more worried about other things.
It wasn’t the nature of the article that made me feel older. It was the fact that when I read the following, I thought about how cool it would actually be to do the same with my children:
My son’s school has a written rule that students in grades K-4 may not ride their bicycles to school. My son and I cheerfully ignore this restriction; I think school rules belong on campus, not off. As we ride together each day, I remember the Huffy Sweet ‘n’ Sassy I rode to school when I was a kid. Hot pink, with a flowered wicker basket, it stood out among the other bikes parked in the crowded racks, its tall orange safety flag flapping in the breeze.
And it would be cool. At least, I think it would be cool. I can imagine three negatives. First, perhaps my child could be made fun of, exactly as the article depicts with a question like, “don’t you have the money to buy a car?” Second, I’d have to live closer to the school, and having a few kids in a few schools might get complicated. Then again, I guess at a certain point it isn’t cool to ride to school with your dad anyway. And third, it seems like bikes are safe nowhere nowadays from vandals. Then again, maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I have a little hyper-anxiety, like lots of parents out there about their children, except I believe the same fate may lie for my bike. I think I’ll have to change that mindset… or move to a nicer area.
This is a really interesting entry as it reminds me of a conversation I had with my father last weekend. He was telling me about a novel concept that is being implemented in many communities to combat childhood obesity. It is the concept of a walking school bus (http://www.walkingschoolbus.org). In a nutshell, a group of parents walk the neighborhood kids to and from school. When they ride their bikes together, it is called a bicycle train. I think it would be a cool idea to have a walking school bus in the neighborhood for my kids to take. My brother walks his son or they rode their bikes to school, all year long. In my sister’s case, they have the opposite problem, the kids are forbid from riding their bikes and the pupils can’t go outside for recess in case a child gets injured. When I was growing up we walked everywhere, took the bus into the city and biked on the trails. Crime statistics indicate that the crime rates are trended downwards but our perception or sensitivity has increased. I agree with the article, that a disconnect exists between perception of crime and its statistical reality. In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell) books he has a chapter talking about this topic. Along the same vein, he discusses how a swimming pool is more dangerous than having a loaded gun in a house. Another book that looks at the same sort of issues is Freakonomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics)
The concept of propeller parents always hovering over their child’s every move is a growing problem. I heard it said that the problem only gets worse as children age. In some cases the college professor has to be interviewed by the parent before the son/daughter can take a college course. The student’s college roommate has to be vetted by the parents before the kid can move into the dorm. Have things changed with time or have our perceptions changed…
No blog entry in a while…How goes the lumbering?