Teaching our Kids Responsibility

To give you a little background, I come from a bit of an unusual family.  Both of my parents are totally blind and have been since before I was born.  They were blind when they met and this was all I knew.  Growing up, this didn't seem strange to me.  They were just my parents and that's just the way it was.  My parents are very capable and determined people and they never let blindness stop them.

My mother lost her sight from an eye infection when she was 14.  After that, she finished high school, graduated from college, and earned a master's degree.  She then moved, alone, from a small town in rural Alabama to Louisville, KY where she took a job working for the Kentucky Department of the Blind as a home teacher.  She traveled (with a driver/secretary) around a region of Kentucky visiting newly blind clients and teaching them skills of independent living and Braille.

My father lost his sight when he was in his late 30's also from a freak eye infection.  My mother was his teacher and when they met Dad could still see a little bit, but he became totally blind shortly after that time.  Dad, no slacker himself, didn't let blindness stand in the way of his life either.  Before losing his sight, he had been a Design Engineer, designing tractor trailers.  That's difficult to do when you're blind, so he was re-trained as a computer programmer and he worked in that capacity for about 7 years before he decided to retire early and be a stay-at-home-dad.  In his free time he finished the basement of our house, framing walls, hanging paneling, installing a drop-ceiling, all without assistance.  He even wired the lights himself, only needing me to tell him the color of the wires.

As you can see, my parents were not ones to let a handicap stand in their way!  They decided that they wanted to have a child and I was born when Mom was 40 and Dad was 44.  That was quite old for parents in the 70s so my family was unique in a few ways.  Because of their age, they did not have more children, so I'm an only child (also a bit unusual in the 70s!).

Growing up, I was never amazed by all my parents accomplished despite being blind.  To me, they were pretty normal parents except that they couldn't drive.  Now that I have children of my own, I am truly amazed and even a bit perplexed that they were able to raise me and I never hurt or killed myself!

I've often been asked how my parents raised me when they couldn't see.  How did I not hurt myself?  How did they know what I was doing or where I was?  I've often wondered, now that I have children, how my parents were able to raise me without being able to see me or what I was doing.  I've tried to remember what it was like so I can determine what their secret was.

One thing my parents always said when I asked them about this is, "You were just always a good child."  They have told me that, even as a young child when choking hazards are a concern, if I found any object on the floor, I'd pick it up and bring it to them.  I can't even get my kids to pick their socks up and put them in the laundry hamper most of the time!  I've wondered if our house was just exceptionally well child-proofed, but when I asked my parents they said that wasn't the case.  I remember seeing outlet covers at a friend's house once and asking what those strange things were, so I suspect my parents weren't lying.  Was I really just a good kid?  Was this a gift from God because he knew they couldn't handle raising a more difficult child?   Perhaps, but I've come to suspect there was something else going on.

I was reading a book today, Home Grown:  Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World.  In this book, the author talks about how protective or not protective we should be of our children.  He points out that, by always protecting our children, we remove responsibility from our children and actually make them less responsible.  As evidence, he refers to another book, The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff where she discusses her time spent with a South American aborigine tribe.  She observed children in this tribe taking part in many activities that would make American adults cringe- using sharp knives, cooking over fires, using machetes, etc.  Despite the children being exposed to all of these hazards, serious injuries or deaths were quite rare.    Liedloff pointed out that these children were making full use of their capacity to take care of themselves while American children only partially use that ability because parents have taken over that role.  She further notes that, in taking that role away from children, we have in many ways endangered them because no one else can look out for a person as well as that person can look out for themselves.

This makes perfect sense to me.  Growing up, I remember feeling like I needed to keep myself safe.  I always kind of knew that my parents couldn't see what I was doing, so I couldn't do anything too crazy.  If I wanted to do something (jump off the swing set, for example) and I wasn't sure how safe it would be, I either avoided the activity or I asked my parents first.  I knew they weren't watching me and weren't going to jump in and stop me if it was too dangerous.  Despite that fact that my parents couldn't see me, I never broke a bone, never needed stitches, and never burned myself on a hot stove or fireplace.  By age 6, I was walking my parents across the neighborhood street and up the sidewalk to church each week.  I told them to watch the bumps in the pavement and to step up or down at the curb.

Many of my friends, on the other hand, were daredevils.  They all seemed to think that I was too cautious and careful.  They climbed high up in trees, rode bikes with their eyes closed, and even climbed out on second-story rooftops.  Was this a childhood rite of passage I missed?  Or had they just missed learning how to be responsible for their own safety?

Now, I look at my kids and I wonder how to apply this to them.  I tend to be a bit overprotective and safety paranoid.  This probably comes from having to be protective and careful for myself.  Nevertheless, I suspect I have in some ways handicapped my children.  I still feel the need to hold my daughter's hand when we're walking through parking lots (she's almost 8).  Yet, tonight, when I wasn't holding her hand, she walked right out between cars into the driving lane without looking.  Fortunately, no cars were coming, but it made me realize how much she depends on me to keep her safe.

I suppose we all learn to be responsible for our own safety eventually.  This usually doesn't occur, however, until we are allowed some freedom and allowed to take some risks.  You can't learn how to use a knife safely if you're never allowed to use one.  I do wonder, though, if some adults drive drunk, take drugs, or engage in other risky behaviors at least partially because they never learned to watch out for themselves and protect their own safety.

Is it too late for me to ease up a bit on my protection of my children so they can learn to be responsible for their own safety?  Is it even a good idea now that they're protective machinery is dormant from years of me and others protecting them from every possible harm?  Can we, in today's society where parents are arrested for letting their kids walk home from a park, stop protecting them from everything?   Are we taking more of a risk and risking more harm to them by protecting them so much?