Hey! Parents! Leave Them Kids Alone!

I’m sick and tired of mothers and fathers who continue to micro-manage their children’s lives. There seems to be an increasing fear and anxiety about children these days. The idea of protecting your kid – against bullying, colds, lice, falling down, sleeping too little, sleeping too much, paedophiles, cars, dogs, violent television, sexy television, loud noise, fatty foods, African Yellow Fever – has gone fully off the chain.

Generally I think this may be to do with more than simply children. In these days of the great Global Credit Crisis everyone seems to be worried about pretty much everything. Your job, your car, your house, your sex life, your drug and alcohol problem, your phone contract, your weight, your age, my internet porn addiction. Oh sorry. Did I just say “my internet porn addiction”? I meant to say YOUR internet porn addiction. God, that was careless of me. A silly slip. I really should be more careful.

Anyway, the general principle seems to be: if you CAN worry about it then DO IT, man! Go nuts. Sky’s the limit. A kind of collective paranoia tends to dominate. And I think children, particularly the idea we all have of the innocent, vulnerable Golden Children have become the symbol of that. Our kids have become the little objects or ciphers into which we project ALL our insecurities and fears about the big bad world. Maybe our kids are our perfect image of ourselves. The little cutie we imagine ourselves to have been? Or think we still are? Our little inner child we nourish and cherish? The little baby we all still are? Have never stopped being? Or maybe it’s the one that comes out when we’re alone with our lover – little shookums needs a little cuddly wuddly… I don’t know. But one thing is for sure. You’re sick. And you need bed rest. Probably round the clock medical care and heavy sedation.

At least that’s the way it’s going.

I’m not moralising and judging other people here. I’m just as capable of parental fears and anxieties as anybody else. I get scared like everyone else. Just this morning I read in the Shanghai Daily a case about a kindergarten in South Western China in which one of the carers, a Mr Sun Qui, was using a hypodermic syringe as a disciplinary tool. If the youngsters didn’t sleep on time or cried too much they got a jab with the ol’ needle. Some poor three-year-old boy was discovered with eight puncture wounds in his hands and waist. Another copped five in the butt. Wow. How do you say “naughty step” in Chinese? I’m no child care expert, but perhaps Mr Sun Qui could have tried a bit of time out before he started the frenzied stabbing.

Now I know it’s way over in China and all. But then I read about a nursery in England where the toddlers were being systematically abused and my fears start to get the better of me. I remember the mind boggling guilt when we first left our little boy in the hands of a day care centre. I still feel remorse about it. I only thank God I wasn’t one of the parents who had to leave their toddler in an ABC Learning Centre. Given the dodgy corporate ethics of ABC’s CEO, Eddy Groves, and the fundamental insistence on the bottom line, things can’t always have been perfect for a child – or “unit of income” or object to be processed or however ABC Learning used to think of them.

But that’s not my point. Just because I’m worried and scared and a tiny bit paranoid like everyone else doesn’t mean I’m right. People talk a lot these days about “compelling arguments”. But simply because you’re being compelled by an emotional argument doesn’t mean it’s true, does it? Just means you’ve been convinced.

So here’s the thing. I suggest parents need to chill. For me, one of the best lessons in child care and healthy attitudes toward kids comes from a rather unexpected source. The famous Anthropologist, Margaret Mead once wrote a couple of brilliant books about children and growing up in Papua New Guinea and Samoa.

For many months she sat and watched the way Manus parents in PNG interacted with their children. Parents are watchful but they do not interfere unless absolutely necessary. Children learn very early how to negotiate the difficult terrain of canoes and water. From a much earlier age than our children, they show great confidence and agility. And trust. There are no straps and baby harnesses – despite the fact that at any stage children can slip through the wooden floor into seawater. And they often do. But they’re collected and warmed and dried off by the fire.

It’s a question of balance – a balance between solicitude and calm peacefulness. Manus children are watched but also allowed to fall and slip and tumble. They’re allowed greater and greater freedom as they get older, too.

Take the toddler’s first steps. The parents are careful but they also expect that the child should walk and swim very quickly. They encourage success but ignore failure. Whole groups of men and women celebrate the toddler’s first few steps. But no one seems to care if they fall and bruise themselves a little. The child gets no audience for her mistakes. She is simply put on her feet and told to try again. So the tendency you see among a lot of children in our culture – the tendency to self-pity – is stifled. In fact they’re often gently told off if they fall.

We might be horrified to see a baby riding in the front of a canoe in rough seas but the Manus people would be equally horrified to see a father constantly telling his children to be careful and to watch out. The parents are there. They provide an expert net of solicitude BUT they hardly ever need to nag or say “don’t!”.

I think, as modern parents, we could all take a valuable lesson from the Manus people. Let the children go. Stop worrying so much. Or your kids might end up as paranoid and anxious as you!

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