We Made Childhood Safer. Did We Accidentally Make Kids Less Capable?

My dad told me a story the other day about when I was a kid that I genuinely don't remember. Apparently, when I was around 8 years old, he left me by myself at some kids' museum in a huge city all day. Just dumbass 8 year old me wandering around a museum while my dad went and did whatever the hell he had to do. When he told me this, I immediately looked at my 7 year old daughter and tried to imagine doing the same thing with her. WTF DAD! I love her, I trust her, and I think she's super duper smart, but my first thought was, Ya hell no.

A lot of us grew up in a completely different version of childhood than the one we have made for our kids. We walked around town, rode our bikes farther than our parents probably realized, climbed shit we absolutely shouldn't have climbed, and got back home with cuts I could never fully explain. Our parents weren't secretly developmental psychologists trying to build resilience and allowing us to express ourselves. Sometimes they genuinely had no fucking idea where we were or what we were doing.

We Got Really Good at Protecting Kids

I'm definitely not arguing that we should bring all of that back. Some of the shit we did was stupid AF, and tons of things are safer now because parents finally learned better. Car seats are better, playgrounds are safer, helmets exist, and I personally enjoy knowing which general zip code my kids are in. We learned things about safety and actually used that knowledge, which is generally how civilization is supposed to work. I just have to add I HATE car seats. They really need to figure out how to make them less bulky and less of a pain in the ass.

You've probably seen those posts about how kids today wouldn't survive our childhood. Usually there's a picture of a playground that looks like a damn medieval torture device. Kids today can figure out technology that would have looked like alien tech when I was 7, and they have access to more information in 10 seconds than I could have found during an entire day at the library. My daughter already tells me to ask ChatGPT or Siri. It always surprises me because who the hell uses Siri.

When we were kids, we had to solve a lot of bullshit because there wasn't always an adult close by to solve them. Your bike chain fell off 3 blocks from home? Congratulations, you're now a bike mechanic. You're thirsty? Find a drinking fountain, garden hose, or somebody's kitchen where the mom vaguely recognizes you. Sometimes you figured it out. Sometimes you didn't. Our parents mostly just told us to go outside and somehow didn't see us again for four hours. But every time we had to solve some tiny problem without asking an adult, we thought, “I can probably figure this out.”

Teach Kids to Do Dangerous Shit Safely

I saw that line somewhere and it stuck with me. Instead of trying to stop kids from ever doing dangerous things, we should teach them how to do dangerous things safely. I think I heard it after watching a video of a kid head-butting a goat, which is honestly not where I expected to receive parenting wisdom but here we are. One minute you're watching a child make a dumbass but funny decision involving goats, and the next you're reconsidering your entire parenting philosophy. I'm obviously not suggesting we line our children up at the petting zoo and teach proper goat combat technique although I wouldn’t mind seeing it. The point is that danger isn't something we can completely get rid of.

Eventually they're going to climb something, cook something, use tools, meet strangers, drive a car, go to parties, and make decisions while Dad isn't standing there. So the job isn't always to say, "Don't do that shit." Sometimes it's, "Here's how you do that without being a complete dumbass." Look, if my kid is running into traffic, obviously I'm stopping them. There is no valuable childhood lesson waiting on the other side of getting hit by a Honda.

There's a difference between protecting kids from danger and protecting them from difficulty.

Modern Childhood's Difficulty Setting Changed

I don't want to recreate my childhood exactly for my daughter. I'm not leaving her alone in a museum in a giant city for several hours because apparently that's a fucking family tradition. I like knowing she's safe. I like that modern parents are expected to know where their kids are instead of occasionally looking outside around sunset and thinking, Hmmmm wonder where my kid went today. Honestly, best case scenario is my kids learn they can solve something while I'm 20 feet away pretending not to watch.

Eventually We Have to Hand Them the Controller

I know it’s hard AF to protect our kids without controlling them. When they're babies, protection basically means control because they're dummies who would happily eat a rock. As they grow, the shit changes. Protecting them means we got to decide when to step in and when to sit back and chill. We have to slowly hand over the controller while we're still sitting close enough to help.

As kids, we were allowed to solve more of our own problems, be bored longer, screw shit up, and do something so unbelievably stupid that our parents are still telling the story thirty years later. I don't want all of that back and definitely not to the level I was as a kid. I wouldn’t mind a few good stories though my parents do tend to focus on all the stupid stuff I did as a kid. I am okay with handing over that spotlight.

I want my kids to know that being safe doesn't mean avoiding everything that is hard. I want them to experience that little rush that comes from doing something alone, looking back, and realizing, “I figured that shit out.” Our instincts will always be to protect our kids, we just have to remember that the goal isn't to remove every obstacle or discomfort from the game.

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