where are the wild things?

there was a story on npr this morning about the movie where the wild things are and the lost wilderness of childhood.

back in the day, we went lots of places & did lots of things without adult supervision. we rode our bikes to the market and bought candy with quarters that we'd scrounged up from somewhere. we walked to the lake and went swimming - just us kids. we played for hours in empty lots and throughout the neighborhood. nowadays, kids are not afforded this freedom. why? oh, lots of reasons really.

at first, i thought, we grown-ups were so determined not to grow up that we've comandeered childhood. there's plenty of opportunity to act childish without bothering the children -- but the problem, of course, is that we'll be labeled insane. a kid can walk in circles until he gets dizzy and falls down. he can do this in the living room or the backyard or the playground or the grocery store. basically, where ever the hell he pleases. grown-ups cannot engage in this type of behaviour without risk of being carted away. but, still, i don't think there is a rampant surge of grown-ups co-opting childhood in order to make ourselves puke-inducingly dizzy. that's just not quite it.

then, i thought, maybe the world is a more dangerous place. some kid is all the time getting shot by a stray bullet or nabbed by a freak who'll keep her in a tent in the backyard for like 18 years. but my grandfather's sister died when she was around 12 or so because she picked a zit and got a blood disease. you really don't hear about the killer zit danger these days, so i'd have to say things are a bit safer on that front. is childhood more dangerous? i doubt it. are the dangers more highly publicized? yes. definitely.

kids used to walk or bike to school - or even ride the bus with other kids - and have a few hours of relatively parent-free time each week. but now they are riding in their parents' cars. and the time they spend in cars? oh, man, don't get me started on that. what happened to the alphabet game & beating up your younger brother in the back seat? now they are all glued to a dvd. what happened to staring out the window at the tops of trees?

why do we not allow the kids to wander aimlessly through the wilderness of childhood? we tell ourselves we're doing all this for the kids. we take pride in the fact that we take a much bigger part in our kids' lives than did our parents. we're THERE FOR THEM. the problem is that the kids actually need the opposite. they need to be left alone. to figure things out for themselves. to learn to deal with bullies and boredom on their own terms. to dream.

the bottom line is that we don't want our kids to fall behind - behind the neighbor kid, behind the kids at school, behind the world filled with kids just waiting to push our kid down. we are overcompensating for what we imagine we missed out on or what we imagine our kids are missing. but, in striving to provide them with every opportunity to reach their full potential, we're destroying any chance they ever had at getting there.