One of the biggest sources for condoning wasteful behavior in child-raising of the 2010's is what I call the “adding a demon” concept. This is the belief that a child can easily be scarred for life by encountering a traumatic situation in his or her tender years. Therefore all children must be carefully protected at all times. The way I envision this concept is that many people think the traumatic event allows a for-real demon to enter the young child, and its presence screws up the child’s life ever after: very much related to comedian Flip Wilson’s quip “the devil made me do it!” Comedy aside, this is a reason given by some people to explain a bad act and accepted by others as a valid excuse.
This trauma-shapes-my-life concept is widespread in contemporary entertainment stories. “I experienced [X] as a child” is a very common plot device to explain why a character cares about some cause as an adult. Example: Young Bruce Wayne sees his parents killed on the streets of Gotham City by a criminal and, as a result, grows up to be Batman, The Caped Crusader. Conversely, young Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone which signals his destiny to be king. Personally, I’ve seen this device so often, I now find it tiresome, but for a lot of people it adds depth to the character. And this popularity is a good indicator of how important it is as instinctive thinking.
This add-a-demon concept justifies being very protective of children. But it does a poor job of matching up with harsh reality. The harsh reality is that children heal very well, from both physical and mental trauma. They can experience terrible things and grow up to be just fine because they are such marvelous healers. An example of this ability to recover comes from my days as an English teacher in Korea. In one of my classes, a student told us a story about his childhood. His family lived in a rural part of the south of South Korea and experienced a famine after the armistice brought a halt to the major battles of the Korean War. People lived through desperate times for many years. The local families coped in part by having the children slather pesticide on the berries of nearby bushes that local birds ate. The pesticide killed the birds, the kids collected them, and the mothers figured out how to prepare them in a way that was not poisonous. This tale sounded spooky and disturbing to me! The student, however, was well-adjusted and doing fine in my class and as a student in a nearby university. This is an example of the healing powers of childhood.
If this ability to heal isn’t taken into account, the child-raising choices can easily become over-protecting. Over-protecting is goat sacrificing childhood learning experiences on the alter of protection. When children don’t learn how to deal with the real world, they are not prepared for life as an adult. A poorly-formed adulthood is wasteful on many levels, which this section will explain.
The dark side of this concept is over-protecting children. The big cost of this is that these children will grow into adults who can't cope. They will have learned to be thin-skinned rather than thick-skinned. They will not have learned how to endure adversity and surprises or how to stay on target long enough to get through life’s crises in order to reach their goals. Instead, they will have learned how to be shocked, how to look for someone to complain to, and how to be patient about waiting for someone else to deal with their complaints and problems.
Furthermore, they will learn to retreat, to hide in security and familiarity. They will learn to become narcissistic instead of networking, computer gaming instead of “can do”. They will have a hard time distinguishing fantasy from fact, and won’t think doing so is important. In sum, they will not learn the thinking patterns needed for them to do their part in making our world a better place. Making our world a better place, as in contributing to the community, is a tough job. It takes being able to deal with setbacks and frustrations: skills that are learned by experiencing painful surprises, enduring them, and learning how to cope with them.
The expense of over-protecting used to be better recognized. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is the proverbial version, dating to the 17th century. And in the 20th century parents would invest in making sure their children got plenty of opportunities to tangle with mildly risky projects. Boy Scouts, summer camping, spending time working on farms and other apprenticeships all were based on this concept of growing through good exposure to variety and risk. In earlier times the community would criticize parents for spoiling children and be serious about the criticism. In the 21st century, however, this is no longer true as criticism for spoiling seems completely bizarre and even out-of-touch with modern parenting. The concept, that a child who is told to be inside all the time is a spoiled child, is dramatically over-ridden by the concept that a child who spends time outside can too easily encounter a traumatic experience that lets in a life-destroying demon.
This 30 Jul 14 Washington Post article, “The criminalization of parenthood” by Radly Balko, gives an example of modern mores with teeth behind them. From the article, “A mom faces a charge of child neglect after she allowed her son to go to a park alone. She says he’s old enough but Port St. Lucie Police disagree. ‘Honestly, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,’ says Gainey. ‘I was letting him go play.’ Dominic was at the park a half a mile from home when an officer pulled up and asked, ‘Where does your mom live?’ Police took him home, and Gainey was arrested and charged with child neglect. Gainey was shocked. The officier’s report states Dominic was ‘unsupervised at the park’ and ‘numerous sex offenders reside in the vicinity.’”
For generations, playing in nearby backyards, parks, fields and woods has been one of the standard experiences of childhood. It was a chance to encounter the physical challenges of the real world and the social challenges of being with other children. It was a time to learn about functioning in a world larger than the family unit and the family home. But for the 21st century generations the perceived balance is different. The feeling now is threats from unhealable demon-adding experiences far outweigh these old fashioned learning benefits. “So keep the kids inside if you can’t be outside personally watching them.” And the community forcefully agrees with this choice. It is not a parent’s choice anymore.
In British culture, getting-over-it is referred to as “the stiff upper lip.” Something bad happens to a child, and the child’s response should be to simply learn from it, get over it, and carry on with life. As I have pointed out in other sections, children are learning machines. What they experience as they grow up teaches them, and they are well designed to heal from experiences which some consider hurtful.
Parents can, and should, guide the childhood learning process, but they should also permit it to happen. Parents need to recognize the wide range of experiences that children should have and included in that range are risky experiences. In the same vein the community needs to condone allowing this wide range of learning to happen.
New Zealand is a place where I have seen this occur. When I lived in New Zealand in the 1990’s there were people rap jumping (an exciting style of rappelling) from the sides of hotels in downtown Auckland. New Zealand, in fact, is where bungee jumping started to flower. These New Zealanders were comfortable with taking risks, and the community was comfortable with allowing other community members to take risks. New Zealand schooling reflects this attitude as well. This 28 Jan 14 Atlantic article, “Recess Without Rules: A school in New Zealand lets its students do whatever they want during playtime. Are American parents ready to endorse a similar policy here?” describes recess at an innovative New Zealand school. “There are no rules on the playground at Swanson Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand. Students are allowed to climb trees, ride skateboards, and play contact games. This relaxed approach to playtime started as a research experiment conducted by two local universities, but it went so well that the school opted to make the changes permanent. According to a recent article, the school has seen a drop in “bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class” have increased.” The principal said, “We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over.”
It is ironic, but it is the fear of adding a demon, rather than a traumatic experience, that in fact adds the demon: A child who can not face surprises and variety does get a demon put inside them, and does get twisted for life.