When I Was a Kid I Walked to School


When I was a kid we didn’t have parents hovering over us every second. I served 6am mass every morning at Immaculate Conception from the time I was in First Grade until I was in Eighth Grade. (Every day. I’m not kidding about that. They taught us the Latin Mass back then and I knew it cold when I was little.) I had a 20-minute walk to the basilica, and in the winter in Chicago it was mighty dark. Do you think my parents drove me? Nope. Not once.

We played “Army” with dirt clods in Powell Park. We rode our bikes everywhere. We were sent to the grocery store by our parents and we walked home with our arms aching from the paper bag loads. We went trick-or-treating without parents anywhere to be seen when we were 5 years old. Sometimes it would have been good if we would have had a little more supervision — like when Frankie Fick got shot through the liver when we were all 8 years old; or when Richard fell from the top of his garage onto the back of his head; or the time I fell down three stories right on my chin because I thought I could slide down our back porch support.

Things are different now.

Kids have helicopter parents. They don’t have any breathing room. They’re not toughened up. That’s why “Quit Coddling Your Kids” really resonates with me. Read it, especially the one about making them work for what they get. I like that idea.

Posted on June 4, 2008
Filed Under Thoughts | Comments

Comments

  • The Tuna
    Frank,

    Like you I walked to school every day by myself, rode my bike to the other side of town to be with friends, and climbed to the top of every tree in my neighborhood. What I remember most was how us kids in the area would get together on our own and play baseball. No parents ever had to arrange anything for us.

    I was reading an article about how parents have started calling in to where there children work, and complaining to the manager if they get a less than stellar performance review. Where does it end? let them grow up.
  • Testing the capcha.
  • Merci
    Just tonight I was looking at a photo of me a couple of months before my fifth birthday. I was playing outside in the snow with my friends Gary and Jeff. I commented that we always played outside, and our parents weren't always out there with us. There were lots of moms home all day, though, watching us out the kitchen window while they made dinner. Any one of them (even if you didn't know them)was welcome to let us know it if we were doing something reprehensible. There was a general blanket of supervision across the neighborhood, rather than one helicoptering parent for each of us. Guess we were the generation that was raised by a village. I think it was a good way to grow up.
  • I first heard the term \"helicopter parent from my youngest daughter who is now a dean at a college in New York. At the time she was an RD at another college in NY. She also used the term \"Lawnmower Parents\" THey run over you and anyone else in their way in order to make sure their kid is fist, best and gets what they want. She also called us one day and thanked us for raising her to be able to make a decision. SHe said so many students were away from home without the ability to do so on their own.
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