But I Smile Anyway…

“What are they?” I hear you ask yourself.

Us.

They are us. Or at least quite a lot of us.

Ok, let me explain myself a little clearer. On a recent post of mine about my Lil Princess and her trip to the O2, I had a short exchange with Kat, where she said she was proud of me!

No no, we should be proud of the little performer, not me!

But the explanation in her comment made me thing…

 And it got me thinking.

We are, in general, a much more fearful type of parent than ours before us.  I am not, by any means, saying that our parents were uncaring, or unfeeling and not bothered by our safety, when we were growing up.

Of course, they were.

But they didn’t have all the knowledge that we have now.

The knowledge of all the awful things that happen out there in the Big Wide World.

We can thank the Media for that.

All through time, bad things have happened to people, adults, and youngsters. Kidnapping, abuse, murder, acts of war and terrorism. It has always been there, but before, you were highly unlikely to know about, for example, an abduction case in Mississippi, sitting in a small village in England, because it wasn’t covered in our papers.

Yet now, thanks to t’internet, we can browse through world news sites, and find out the horrors that occur around the world, 24 hours a day… and thanks to Social Media, things get posted, and reposted, and like with Chinese Whispers, sometimes things get twisted out of proportion… And God forbid something like that happen to our darlings!

And who suffers, as a result of us becoming so much more aware of dangers?

Kids.

The thing is, we don’t get to know about the percentages, the ratios, the probabilities of these kinds of happenings. We just know they happened.  So in our minds, they could happen to our kids too.

Remember your own childhoods?

Walking to school alone from young ages. In the holidays, disappearing as soon as you were allowed, and only appearing for mealtimes. Sure your mum knew who you were with (most of the time), and where you were (again most of the time!) but there were no mobile phones, so you couldn’t be checked on unless someone physically went out.

Freedom. That’s what we had.  Or more freedom than we seem to give our kids now.

I am definitely not one to preach.  I am just as bad.  I have always taken my kids to, and from school. They don’t go to the park alone. They only stay at their grandparents without us.

Why? Because of the fear that ‘something’ will happen to them.

And what does this do to our kids? Well, it is only going to rub off on them. And will they not grow up to become fearful of everything?

And now, I am on the crux of another pretty scary time, where my Lil Man is concerned.  He will be starting Secondary School soon, in September.  Big school!  I have been lucky as I was in the same school teaching, so I always had an overview of what was going on. But soon, I will be away from him.  He will have to do so much independently, and I remember posting about my fears before regarding him starting to do things himself.

And I can proudly say, that I have realised he is growing up!

He hasn’t even walked to the local shop (30 seconds away) on his own, to get me some milk, let alone walking to school alone! I know I need to remedy this now.

He is still very much a Lil Man, in every sense, size and stature, but he is a big character, and the last year have seen such changes in him, confidence-wise, and even with his own use of common sense!

He will be away mid this year, for 4 nights, with his class, which will be an amazing experience, and it is also his birthday when he is away.  But he is going.  I know a few people who have refused to let their kids go, for all sorts of silly reasons, but no, he needs to do this.

And Lil Princess, singing at the O2, a huge venue, where she was there with over 7,500 kids, and triple that in the audience, but not with me.  I’m surprised I wasn’t nervous!

I, for one, am being much more proactive about giving them these chances… I can’t say the same for the rest of the adults in the family!

My Mother-in-law dotes on her grandchildren, and whenever there is a time where they are going to be doing something out of the ordinary, she starts dreaming silly things!  The O2 trip, for example, brought on a dream that we were going there, and we lost Lil Man in the crowds! Oh, she has woken up in the past crying out their names too!

I am rambling on now, but the main point… we need to give our kids a little more chance to be independent, and to make choices of their own, without clouding our judgement because of what we read on Google that morning…

Don’t project your fears on them. It’s natural to have concerns, but we need to let them unfurl their wings and fly unaided at some point.  So why disable them, by not giving them the chance to practice from an early age? This only means that, as they get older, they will find it tougher to be independent, and also, they will carry those fears themselves, and possibly not take opportunities, for fear of ‘something’ happening.

Do I make any sense?