Hoping the kids get hurt

I told my daughters I want their children to get hurt and they agreed that it's a good idea.

TBH, I was expecting some push-back, maybe even indignation at the suggestion. What kind of monster looks at the most vulnerable in his family and wishes them pain? Instead, I found out they had been thinking along the same lines. And that was very gratifying, because it makes them thoughtful parents.

We all want to give our children the security and confidence that enables them to grow without fear. We work to protect them from negative experiences, even to the point of insulating them from the fact that those experiences exist. We know it won’t last forever. Reality will intervene. No matter what kind of cocoon we wrap around them, they will eventually graduate into a real world where parental force fields dissolve.

We want them to be carefree and happy and enjoy life like kids, but they also have to learn to be street smart in a way that requires them getting knocked down a few times. The more they interact with the world on their own, with no blocking and tackling from the guardians in their lives, the more likely and more frequent the beat-downs will be.

One day, they’re holding your hand as they cross the street and they don’t have to think about their own safety and, if you blink, you’ll find them maneuvering through rush-hour traffic on a Divvy bike. Suddenly, safety requires that they keep their heads on a swivel, along with the painful awareness that they can’t trust everything that gets said or the people who say it.

Some of life’s most valuable lessons come in only two sizes: bad and worse. The kids can’t mature into fully-capable adults without those lessons, so I’m rooting for the bad ones. I want them to learn about life the hard way, but not too hard. I want them to get bumped, but not bruised; hurt, but not damaged; wary, but not cynical. We need to step back and let them fall, but not so hard they can’t get back up and carry the lessons they’ve learned into a happy future. Or, so we hope.

As parents, as humans, we can never hit the balance point precisely, but it’s a worthy target. It’s also the hardest dance we need to master in life, with too many intrusions, too many variables, too much of the real world outside our door. The kids in my universe are aging into the danger zone, and the best I can hope for is that they only get hurt.

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