Childhood

When I was growing up in America, the world was a much different place. People felt safe and left their doors unlocked. Parents allowed their kids to roam at will. I spent most of my childhood exploring and playing with my friends. During the summer I would not come home until well after dark most days, and then only because I had to eat eventually. My best memories were the many hours at the library reading just for fun and all the time I spent playing in the creek looking for animals (fish, crayfish, turtles, etc) and bones. I barely ever remember doing homework, it just was never assigned. However, it was far from all fun and games. I was given chores from a very early age. I was doing the family laundry by the time I was 8, the dishes at 9, and shoveling snow (I grew up in Wisconsin where there is a lot of snow) and mowing the lawn by 10. In order to earn some money, I began mowing and shoveling for the neighbors by the time I was 12. At 14 I spent the summer at a work camp in order to earn the money to buy a stereo. Since age 16 (the minimum age for general employment) I have been constantly employed. At one point in college I had three different jobs in order to pay my way!

            Today in America, parents do not feel as though it is safe to allow children to play outside alone anymore. All it takes is one incident on CNN of a child disappearing from a backyard to send all the parents into a panic. It’s too bad too because kids are full of curiosity. There are almost no kids outside playing anymore, except under close supervision in their own yards. My son has homework every day. Much of his time is scheduled. Schools are so worried about the consequences of failing to meet the standards that all they seem to do is teach for the standardized performance tests (TAKS here in Texas).

 At the same time, my generation is getting far richer than my parent’s generation, partly due to increased wages, but mostly due to cheap imports from China. Parents seem to be trying to compensate for those things the children are missing. However, this is making our children spoiled, not truly appreciating anything. My parent’s generation believed it was their job to make sure children never went to bed hungry. In the current generation that is not enough, parents seem to believe it is their job to alleviate all suffering for our children, no matter the source.

My wife tells me that while growing up in Korea, the only real memory she has of childhood are the countless hours she spent studying. She would often go to school in the dark and come home in the dark. As expected, she never worked at a job until after she graduated from college. Consequently, she does not have many of the life skills that I have. Korean kids today seem to have a very similar childhood, a childhood of studying. I was absolutely amazed when I heard that some Korean parents brag when their children get bloody noses from too much studying. In fact, my nephew in Korea is in his senior year of high school this year and I was once more shocked to hear that my sister-in-law told us we shouldn’t visit Korea this year because her son needs to study with no distractions.

            My great-grandmother used to tell me stories about how hard it was for her as a girl. She’d wake at 4:00 to milk the cows and feed the chickens, care for her siblings, and walk five miles to and from school in all weather (uphill both ways!). Whenever I’d hear these stories, I’d roll my eyes(thinking, here she goes again!) and listen to her just enough that I wasn’t being disrespectful, I didn’t really make anything of it. However, I must sound to my kids much like she sounded to me! Despite this, I am holding firm, just because we can provide our children with everything doesn’t mean we should. As a professor, I encounter many college students that report spectacular grades in high school, and even in college. However, when I sit to talk with them, they inevitably seem to be lacking any kind of wisdom or true knowledge. I believe that children need more life experiences than books can offer in order to truly achieve their potential.