I wrote that Done post a couple of weeks ago, about how I'm just going to go with the flow for a while on the free-range kids question. Stella is the only Gladly child left at the neighborhood grade school, and it changes things. I do not want to fight the battle with the after-school program in which I say, "My daughter is going to sign herself out every day at 4:15 and walk home, and that's flat," only to hear them say, "But think of the children!" Although she is perfectly capable of walking to ballet, that would be pushing the envelope on our neighborhood norms. Kids run around all the time without adult supervision -- every day as I am walking home I spot half a dozen kids playing outside with no adults in sight -- but going more than a couple of blocks alone is something that bigger kids do.
It turns out, though, that my ideas about "going with the flow" are not super flow-y. And I have inculcated this brood of kids with ideas about what they can do, and they seem to have been thoroughly indoctrinated.
Over the weekend we made the trek to the Chicago area, where we visited the Fox Valley Folk Festival. I love the FVFF. It's held on a little island in the Fox River, with a playground at one end and waterfowl all around. There's a big stage and a number of smaller stages, and a kids' tent, and lots of little jam sessions that spring up under the lovely old trees. The seven of us got there yesterday afternoon and agreed to meet in two hours. I said, "Stay on the island; do not go in the water. Be very polite." Stella was hanging out with Alex at first.
(Alex is 19 now, and sometimes we have differences of opinion on selected topics. These have included Socks (How Often Must They Really Be Washed?), Wet Towels (How Long Can They Be Left On The Hardwood Floor?) and College Classes (How Frequently Ought One To Attend?). But he is the very best big brother that my Stella could ever hope to have. She brings out his most patient, generous, thoughtful self, and my heart beats glad and grateful whenever I watch them together.)
They prowled around for a while together, and then she wanted to listen to a storyteller who didn't catch Alex's fancy. He told her she could sit quietly and listen without him, and she was super-proud of herself about that. In my view this is an excellent thing, for her to hear from her adored big brother that he knew she could conduct herself in public appropriately, and that she had nothing to be afraid of, and that she should sit and enjoy the story until he came back. So she did-- a pleasantly creepy story about bones crying out for justice.
The sticky bit is that it wasn't just our immediate family on the island.
We were meeting a bunch of extended family there, with a bunch of different opinions about how and when kids should be left alone. When I found Stella with some cousins and others a bit later, I wondered if there might be a waft of disapproval in the air. And then at the end of the afternoon, when I was alone on the island with my two youngest kids, I didn't need to wonder any longer. Pete really wanted to hear Lee Murdock, and Stella really wanted to color at the kids' tent. These two sites were maybe 150 yards apart. I told Stella that she could not go wandering for any reason (<- this is me attempting to dial it back) and that she should not take any grief from any adult (<- this is me failing to suppress my true self). Fifteen minutes after the Lee Murdock set started, I went to check on her and found a relative nearby.
Stella tells me that this relative had asked her a string of questions about what she was doing in the kids' tent. Did she know where her parents were? Was she sure? Was she absolutely sure? Did her parents know where she was? Was she sure? Etc. "I'm fine," she said. "I'm perfectly fine. My mom is right over there and she's coming back for me. Yes, I'm sure."
We left about 20 minutes later, but the encounter lingered in my mind as we sped toward Gladlyville. "Elwood," I called from the back seat, where I was sitting between the two littles, "tell me to chill out about this." "Chill out," he called dutifully from the front seat. Joe turned around from the middle seat. "Mom," he said incredulously, "are you really worried that it makes you a worse mom because you're teaching your kids to be independent?" He was obviously thinking, Because that's nuts. I hadn't thought, until I saw it in action yesterday, about the extent to which my boys' opinions about kids' capabilities have been shaped by my opinions about kids' capabilities. I love it, and at the same time it complicates the decision to say, "Wait, now we are going to go with the flow."
This particular extended-family relationship has some long-standing complexities. I can't shrug it off as I might a stranger's judgment (we all know I am SO AWESOME at letting go of strangers' opinions, as attested by the 8000 or so words in this category of my archives); I can't talk it through as I might with a friend because there are many layers of crud piled on top, like the relationship version of sedimentary rock. Maybe the problem is that I want to foster my kids' independence and I want everybody to like me. And I suppose, if I have to pick one of those two things, that I am going to pick Option A.
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