I keep hearing a great deal about protecting our children, protecting our women, protecting people in general from disturbing ideas or people that they do not understand. Many seem to believe that the best way to raise a child is to keep them from having to deal with situations that that might cause them to feel anxious. While I agree that it is up to parents to introduce difficult topics like sexuality and death, I have learned in my many decades on this earth that our young ones often hear about such things long before we are ready to talk about them.
I still recall the day when I was six years old and a classmate quite vividly explained the birds and the bees to a very attentive group of us. I remember my best friend adamantly insisting that her parents would never do the kinds of things that the girl revealed to us. My take was to mull over the possibility that she was right. I kept my concerns to myself and marveled at the girl’s accuracy when my mother finally got around to giving me “the talk” many years later.
The point of my story is that my quite wonderful mom thought it best to wait to provide me with information about how babies come to be until I had reached puberty. I suppose that she was reluctant to discuss such things before I seemed capable of understanding. She might have been right but by the time her lovely explanations came to me I had already heard about the topic from many different friends who were eager to share what they had heard or seen.
There is a great deal of effort being made by parents today who quite lovingly want to keep their children innocent for as long as possible. I suppose that I was just as guilty of that way of thinking as others, only to hear from my two daughters that they had already picked up all kinds of information on difficult topics long before I stepped in to educate them.
Most of us figured out that there was no Santa Claus on our own but never told our parents because we feared losing those lovely Christmas gifts that seemed to magically appear under our Christmas trees. Maybe we accidentally found the gifts inside a closet that we were not supposed to enter or perhaps yet another classmate spilled the beans and made us cry. My point is that all of the ‘protecting’ that we are doing is often moot because our youngsters get information from the kid grapevine. Often those truths are not quite accurate or may even be wrong. We would do well to be a bit more open with our youngsters concerning topics that may be confusing to them even if we think they are too young to hear about such things.
I have often told the story of my uncle being quite direct in explaining why he had a wooden leg. I appreciated his honesty and felt far less anxious when his cancer finally overcame him than I would have if I had only heard the whispers of my mother and aunts who were trying to shield me after he died. I was able to grieve properly because I understood from him that his life would be cut short. He prepared me in a beautiful and lovely way. It was hard to lose him but the blow was softened by his wisdom in sharing the truth with me.
There are so many efforts to improve our schools by bringing prayer into the daily routine and taking questionable books from the library. Some parents even fear having their children learn about slavery, segregation and the Holocaust too soon. They want to ban information that they worry might make their children feel emotions of sorrow or even guilt. They don’t seem to understand that hiding such things from young people only makes them more fearful. They also do not realize that praying all the time in school does not necessarily make the environment better and happier. I should know because I spent twelve years in a religious private school where the usual difficulties arose in spite of the efforts of the adults.
I loved my experience in the school and I enjoyed our religious instruction but it was the religion that me and my family followed, not someone else’s idea of how I should be taught about faith. It also did not insure that I would be surrounded with only good people. There were still bad things that happened. I actually chose a public university because I felt that it was time for me to learn more about the rest of the population and I will always believe that it was the best decision I ever made. I needed to live outside of the little bubble that had left me somewhat naive and incapable of dealing with the realities of life.
My advice to parents would be to talk honestly to their children about their feelings, their questions about sexuality, their spiritual longings. They should listen as well. A child will feel far more comfort in truth than in a situation that seems to be cloaked in mysteries or even fantasies. The world is real and it can sometimes be brutal. The best parents begin teaching their children how to cope early on. Sometimes that means introducing topics with well written stories that prompt deep discussions. The main idea is for children to know that they can come to their parents with anything, even news that may distress them. They will know that they are safe not because they have been sheltered but because they have been shown what is true. The wise parent teaches their children to cope by being honest and loving.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 