When I got a thousand words into that Sane Mom, Lonely Mom post, I figured it was time to quit. But I didn't actually make the point I started out to make, which is this: other people's over-caution keeps being an avoidable pain in my butt.
Back in 2013 I posted about the chess club coordinator's assertion that it was totally not okay for me to come and go from the chess tournament. I was supposed to be on the premises at all times, even though parents were banned from the actual matches and even though this rule was not included in any of the chess club materials from the preceding 8 years. The rule is now stated in the chess club materials (actual quote from last year's chess club orientation: "but we have lots of chargers, so you and the kids won't get bored while you wait!" -- surely I cannot be the only one put off by the vision it evokes of a roomful of people spending the day plugged into their devices because SAFETY FIRST), with the result that our kids didn't go to any tournaments last year. Recently we learned that because we elected not to spend our winter Saturdays hovering nearby at tournaments, making sure no one sustained any chess injuries, our kids would automatically be wait-listed for this year's chess club.
This is a shame, I think.
The Daisy leader at Stella's school is that same mom, the one who said that it was "totally not okay" for me to check in intermittently with the well-behaved children who did not actually require any additional adult supervision that day. Stella would love to be a Daisy, but I...just can't do it with that mom. The thing I loved about being a Girl Scout was the independence it taught me: how to be alone in the woods without being needlessly frightened, how to light a fire in the rain with one match, how to cook a palatable impromptu meal with the banged-around dregs of my supplies.
You will notice that sitting quietly with an iPad, tethered to the wall by its cord, does not appear on the list of valuable skills I learned in scouting.
Maybe I'm being hasty. Maybe I'm still too defensive about my "totally not okay" parenting. Maybe independence is actually high up on this other mom's list of priorities for her Daisies.
Maybe there are also a lot of chess-tournament-related injuries being averted by parents who look up from their phones at precisely the right moment to save their helpless children from the hazards of... never mind, I can't even imagine an ending for that sentence.
The school sent home a flyer from the nature club. It said, "No children are permitted to walk home after nature club meetings." I am going to guess that out of all the schools in the district, ours has one of the highest percentages of students who walk. Every morning and every afternoon, kids come streaming in and out on their own two feet. They don't get hit by cars; they certainly don't get kidnapped. And even there, the counterfactual but persistent message is sneaking through: it's safer for kids to ride in cars. Bad things might happen to them out on those dangerous sidewalks.
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