In 1955, when I was in fifth grade, back before there were such things as “play dates,” my main activity with or without a friend was hiking off into the Connecticut woods. All that was involved in launching such “expotitions,” as Winnie the Pooh would say, was for one of us to yell up to our Mom: “We’re going on a hike.” The reply was always: “Okay, be back for dinner,” and we were off.
Adventuring into unknown territory was one of my favorite pastimes, and perhaps one of the most important elements of my education. By the time we were twelve, bicycles widened our horizons. My mother, who had four of us to keep track of, was more relieved than worried that I was out on my own. She was like an air traffic controller launching four children and a husband every morning into the world and watching each of us back to what she hoped would be a three-point-landing every evening. Then we would sit together at her table and be a family.
Of course, she learned early on that with five loved ones to watch and worry about, it was a mathematical probability that she could expect at least one of us to be “coming in on wing and a prayer.” With me it was usually the bloody knees, but sometimes there were bloody heads as well. No matter which wing was damaged or where the bullet holes were in the fuselage, a wound was always a badge of honor, proof of something—worthiness. Yes, worthiness. With or without the blood, these adventures were always some kind of triumph.
Though we never talked about it, I know now, looking back, that managing all those loved ones and trying to have a life of her own, she would often experience psychic overload and go numb (since, to her, getting mad was evil). Her relief at having us go out the doorway, though subtly expressed, was strong enough for me to feel. The nearly mechanical way she got dinner on the table did not register on my consciousness then, but fifty years later I can feel that it settled firmly into my psyche. Now, when I remember her saying, “I just want to curl up with a good book,” I realize how draining the sustained attention to her five loves must have been, those five responsibilities, those five pains in the neck. Being an air traffic controller is intense work. Parenting is even tougher.
Kids watch parents out of the corner of one eye. I remember that time vividly. Kids are focused on their own business, a business that comes from within and is the resultant of many forces, interior and exterior. They grow up badly in need of an air traffic controller, because there is just too much for them to worry about, impulses from within, and pressures from without. When they say “Mom! No!” or complain, “Oh, Dad,” it is usually not because parents are wrong, or even that they think they are wrong, it is because the parental imposition is just one more thing too many. This extra, additional variable that our parents are laying on kids threatens to throw them off course, a course they would rather not have to correct. Looking back, I can put a grown perspective and a voice to my frustrated thoughts about it at the time: “It’s nice to have a parent in the conning tower, but she doesn’t seem to realize what’s involved in flying this damned crate. She just has no idea of the pressures I am under!” Sigh!
Last Month’s column: Do Boys and Girls Learn Differently?
From the Principal’s Office: Lessons on Learning, Life, and Parenting is published bi-monthly. Each column is written by Rick Ackerly, a distinguished educator with thirty years experience in middle and elementary school education, who is currently the Head of the Children’s Day School in San Francisco.
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