The Kids Are Alright...Right?

I've read two blog posts today that have me thinking about my son's personal safety. One was written by Lenore Skenazy at her blog, Free Range Kids. She wrote about her 10-year-old-son's train ride that ended with police, a train conductor, and Lenore trying to come to to terms with the fact that the boy had just taken a train ride—gasp!—all alone. The other was over at Strollerderby and was about one mother's confidence in her sons' ownership of pocket knives. Knives that could come in handy if the boys ever found themselves in a tussle with an adult who means to harm them. Yikes. 

Lenore has written before about her child's adventures in freedom. You may have read her widely-covered article about her son negotiating New York public transportation to find his way home from a retail store. Parents all over the country cried foul as they vilified her for trusting her son to recall what he'd been taught about personal safety and danger avoidance. 

My husband and I discussed the article for some time, he more ready to cheer and I more ready to simmer in skepticism. And this is interesting because he grew up fairly sheltered in a small California town, while I ran around Cincinnati taking the bus from morning till night. So why am I so reluctant to nurture the same independence in my own son? Well, given that he's only six, I'm pretty sure I don't need to teach him the bus routes to downtown Minneapolis just yet, but there will come a time that I'll need to let go. We only recently gave him an errand to do on his own, delivering an envelope to a neighbor's house on the next block. He was so proud when he returned, and I was too, as I breathed a sigh of relief. I know it's time for more miniature outings for my son. 

Sooner than I'd like to admit Henry will be asking to go to our nearby grocery store, drug store, or McDonald's, to spend some of his allowance. And why shouldn't he? When I was just a few years older than he is now I visited our local Kroger's at all times of the day and night. I shopped at the drug store and ate at the restaurants and ice cream shops and went to $1 movies at the local theater. I did this without my parents, or even my big sister. I walked blocks and blocks to and from the bus stops and I ran around downtown like it was my backyard. 

Am I a hypocrite? I feel like one. I want to say without hesitation that I'll encourage my son to try his wings and let him develop street smarts of his own. I want to say that I'll happily send him off to the bus stop or the light rail station. I want to declare with certainty that my son will make good decisions because I've taught him well. Will I give him a pocket knife? Probably not. It's just not something that's been done in my family. But the fact that a child might actually need a knife to fend off the boogie man someday? That's going to keep me up nights. 

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do you hear it? The magical sounds of the season? A distant string of sleigh bells? Holiday music coming from the stereo? No? Oh, that’s due to the chorus of coughing in our house. Henry was nearly done with his cold, we thought, but his cough still lingers. Husband has it now, too, and I’m smack in the middle of it. Happy Holidays! The biggest bummer for me is that I’ve lost my singing voice. I’m no Martina McBride, but I do love to sing (and I sometimes wonder what might’ve happened had I applied at a music school....) especially at this time of the year. Unfortunately, I sound like a poor imitation of someone who can sing. Which means the nightly bedtime ritual of singing to my son has become less about singing holiday songs and more about “let’s get this over with.” I doubt he’s critiquing me, but if I can’t stand the way I sound, he probably can't, either.

I’ve also been baking and cooking holiday cookies and candy. This year, I made the fudge that I always make, only without the added fun of plunging my hand into the boiling sugar, milk, and butter. That was my trick last season. Delicious fudge, now with added essence of Jenni! I also made Ina Garten’s Rugelach cookies, which is time consuming but oh-so-delicious! We also have peanut butter blossoms, at Henry’s request. He remembered them from last year and he loves taking the Hershey’s kisses out of their silver wrappers, lucky for me. This coming weekend we’ll bake sugar cookie cut-outs: it’s just not Christmas without them.

Today I picked up an ornament for Henry and one for my husband, building on a tradition I started several years ago. So far, I think I'm the only one who's really enjoying this particular ritual. I think my husband, Tim, usually forgets to buy an ornament for me, and he's forced to go back to the local Patina or Bibelot shops at the last minute to see what's left. But what I'm hoping for is to create a trove of ornaments that Henry will someday take to his own home and hang on his own tree. Thinking that far ahead makes my heart ache. I want him to stay 6 years old forever.

Personally, I'm as excited as a little girl for this Christmas. I have very special gifts for both of the men in my life, to be hidden beneath the tree after both men are in bed on Christmas Eve. I cannot wait to see their faces Christmas morning. I bet I won't even mind when Henry gets us out of bed at 4 a.m. I've been pretty cognizant lately that things may be very different for us next year, if one of us loses our jobs, heaven forbid. So maybe I'm a bit like the ostrich this year, denying there's a recession and stubbornly insisting on buying presents for the big day. But I'm after something deeper, too. I want to have one special day where the words "can't afford" and "trying to save money" aren't part of the conversation. That may come soon enough. For one day, let us feel the thrill like children, laugh like fools, and eat like crazy.

Now pass those cookies!

Gift Giving, and Other Questionable Choices

My son is six years old. Still so delightfully innocent in many ways, and growing more and more worldly every minute, too, much to my dismay. I'm hearing about things that he's witnessing or participating in at school that are curling my hair. But last weekend, he made a request that stumped my husband and me for several days. I'm still not convinced we gave the right answer.

Son announced that he would like to buy a gift for a classmate, a girl that he sits next to in first grade. "Mom, I really want to buy her a present. I told her I would," he said earnestly. I didn't know what to say. A first-grader buying another first-grader a gift? Why? We're used to buying gifts for birthday parties, but this was a first. At first, I thought it wasn't a great idea, but I wanted more information. 

I asked why he wanted to do this. He told me he had promised her a gift. Ah-ha, I thought, maybe he's trying to buy her friendship. He also told me that he had given her a drawing or a note recently, and that she hadn't been any too impressed with it. So I figured he was trying to win her favor with a little gift. Then, he got specific about the gift: he wanted to buy her a tiny stuffed puppy he had seen at Target. A puppy he had wanted for himself. So, now he wanted to buy an item for someone else that he actually wanted for himself. Are you trying to get her to like you better, I asked? He said no, but I still wondered if that was part of the equation.

Some parenting decisions are fairly cut and dried. This wasn't. My spouse and I pondered over this for three days, and still came to different conclusions. Husband thought we should allow son to spend his money and to see what the outcome would be, learning a lesson if the recipient was still cool toward our kid. I thought it would be better to discourage spending money on someone who was not even really a friend, and offered to bake cookies as a gift as an alternative. In the end, we didn't let our son spend money on a trinket, and he brought her homemade treats instead. And the girl? She didn't care for the chocolate-covered pretzels at all. Frankly, I don't think she's that keen on our young man—that or she's incredibly difficult to please. 

I recall vividly wanting to give gifts to teachers I was crazy about and older boys that I had crushes on. I tried to give my third grade teacher a pair of earrings that had belonged to my grandmother. Luckily, she returned them and gently explained that I should keep them for myself. Its hard to know what to do when you're young and you have strong feelings for someone, and I'm still not sure if we made the right decision about this gift issue. I want my son to be generous of spirit, but how do I encourage that if I discourage gift-giving? When I was his age, I didn't have an allowance burning a hole in my pocket, or a parent offering to bake cookies with me to give as gifts (bless her heart, a single working mom, she didn't have time!) So I'm in uncharted territory here. I'll do my best.