file photo By Boyd Loving
Posted: 05/13/2015 10:36 am EDT Updated: 05/13/2015 10:59 am EDT
By Anjali Enjeti
You remember childhood, don’t you?
We wore our house keys around our necks like dog tags, walked home from school alone and let ourselves inside while our parents were still at work. We crossed busy intersections during rush hour to purchase bubble gum cigarettes with change from empty soda cans.
Our playgrounds were construction sites, heaps of dirt, creeks filled with snakes and turtles we collected as pets. We climbed trees, muddied our Garanimals, scaled fences between neighbors’ backyards. We spent Memorial Day to Labor Day barefoot, the soles of our feet blackened like coal, dirt clumping underneath our toenails. Skateboards, roller skates and bikes defined our boundaries — our Baby Boomer parents would scoff if we asked for a ride somewhere. They were too busy reading the newspaper, watching soaps or drinking beer on the stoop with the neighbors.
We were told to come in at dark, not a second earlier.
We had our kids late. Probably too late. Now we’re cranky, sleep-deprived 40-somethings changing chlorine-free, biodegradable diapers while Dora the Explorer morphs into a hormonal teen right before our very eyes. We claim we don’t regret waiting because we “needed to get established in our careers first” and “wanted to save enough money,” even though we know damn well we have neither viable careers nor anything resembling a nest egg.
We cart our children to chess, robotics, baseball practice, ballet, cello, swimming lessons and birthday parties. Though they run our lives like lunatic ringmasters, we insist such activities make them well-rounded / social / intellectual / competitive / creative.
They are rarely out of our sights. They’re our extensions, buds hanging off our stems, the quality, durability, and character of their bloom wholly dependent on our careful, measured, intentional nurturing. We stuff them into slings as babies, backpacks and strollers as toddlers, tie them with leashes as preschoolers and use GPS and apps to monitor their whereabouts as teens.
Listen, you narcissistic , self righteous bourgeois yuppie.
You , yes you, probably drive a huge SUV and make if very dangerous for the little ones to run around now.
YOu, , yes, you probably contriiguted to the over developement and gaggin amount of strip malls in this state by overconsumeing.
When was the last time you bought yourself new clothes. I bet it was not five or more years agos. You are a mjaterialistic narcissisitic pig, trying to dress yourself in Godliness. You are a pig.
we need to help and push our kids to learn a trade, school is great but and i do mean but . at times people can not find jobs.
Articles like this piss me off. Anything that starts with “In my day…” immediately reminds me of an irrelevant Grandpa Simpson talking about nickles with bees on them and an onion on his belt.
Yeah, Anjali, I’ll go be a workaholic, and see my kid every few days, or weeks…then wonder WHAT HAPPENED OMG when she doesn’t wake up one morning after going to sleep with a needle in her arm.
You raise your kids the way you want, and I’ll handle mine.
You know there are problems with todays parents when the far left (code name “progressives”) are unhappy with what their social engineering (aka “progress”) has wrought…