“Honey, sometimes shit is hard.”

Yep. Just like that.

Because it is.

And when he’s crying because his knee hurts, and I’m telling him he needs to make it up the hill so we can catch our bus–when I really want to bike all the way home–what else can I say other than, that sometimes shit is hard?

I also tell him that these challenges don’t have to be so hard. That it’s all in your perception. You can push through the pain to get where you need to go. Just a little bit further. You can do it. I’m proud of you for being so tough. These challenges prepare you to handle for life and the bigger challenges that will inevitably greet you one day.

And sometimes I feel bad because we only have so much time for stalling before I start to get really conscious of the time ticking away and the possibility of missing my bus seems to loom.

“We don’t have time for this,” I snap. “I have a bus to catch and we need to get where we’re going.”

And he’s all, “But my helmet and my knee and ouch my toe…”

And sometimes I lose my patience.

Because, so the fuck what it’s hard. You know what? It really ain’t that hard. I’ve been through harder. Your knee hurts, well so does mine. Almost always. You’re tired from playing all day? Well I was working all day and had to ride the 8 miles from work to the Boys & Girls club because the bus bike rack was full. It was a brutal ride and we have 4 more to go.

I don’t want to hear about your pain, I have my own I’m trying to work through.

But I’m the parent, so its selfish for me to talk about my pain, when he’s talking about his. I’m supposed to keep that to myself and let him believe that the rides are only challenging for him. I’m supermom and can handle it all.

But that load gets heavy and on some level I want him to understand that the shit isn’t easy for me either. I enjoy commuting by bike most of the time, yes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also challenging. It doesn’t mean there aren’t days that I wish I had a car, so I wouldn’t have to worry about missing the bus and always being prepared to get on my bike and push myself the distance to get to him on time; before the Boys & Girl’s club closes.

So I tell him, straight up, that it’s not easy. Life isn’t easy. We gotta do, what we gotta do. And sometimes, to get things done, you just gotta grit your teeth, and keep it pushing.

Heh.

I’m of two minds on this myself neither of which include the parents questioning the government or the airline.

1) What resourceful kids! The girl decided she wanted to go to use her money to fly. She’d never done it before. She wanted to try something new. Enlisted her brother and a friend to go with her. Kids travel unaccompanied all the time (hell, my oldest son does it at least twice a year). They weren’t hurt, just a little spooked when they flew into the wrong airport.

2) As a parent who believes in giving my kids a long leash, I’m bothered by the fact that these kids didn’t bother to alert their parents. Is it because they knew they’d be told no? Is it because they didn’t think about it? Either way, they need to understand the responsibility of freedom. Meaning: if you want more freedom, you become responsible for making sure your parents are aware of where you are and coming in the house on time.

I know there will be lots of people blaming the airline employees for not asking questions and not stopping the kids from traveling without parental permission. But it’s not the airline’s fault. It’s not the regulator’s fault. This comes down to kids pushing the boundaries…perhaps a little too far for their parents’ liking.

Without knowing more about the kids or the families, I’ll say that passing the responsibility off to the airline to “ask questions” teaches the kids that they can do what they want, and there will be no consequences. And there should definitely be consequences. The worst thing these parents could do is sue the airline for some perceived negligence. Instead, the parents should talk to their kids about why what they did was wrong, the responsibility of freedom and lay down some ground rules for the next time the kids get the itch to travel. They were all old enough, the only problem is that they didn’t ask permission.

What do you think?

I provided him with a note granting my permission to ride his bike to school, to which the school responded that it was against the district policy to allow kids in his grade to ride to school on a bike.

I was pissed* because they hadn’t even asked any questions (even though I specifically invited them to call me if they had any and included two numbers). I immediately left a message for the principal wasn’t really sure what to do. First thing I needed to do was find that policy. If it wasn’t on the books and publicly available, they really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I also emailed Free-Range kids, to get some other ideas from the free-range community before I had my next conversation with a school admin. There were a bunch of great suggestions, most of which echoed the do your homework, contact the board, do it anyway and find somewhere to lock the bike off campus. (Thanks Free-Range Kids!)

Then I started to think about whether or not it was really worth the fight. Was it something we really needed or was it just me fighting the system (I have a tendency to want to make my own rules). I decided this was something the boy and I needed for a few reasons:

1. I don’t have a car
2. I use a combination of bike/bus as transportation
3. I would be riding with him
4. The after-school getting home from the after school program takes longer by bus, than by bike

You see, beyond my objections as a free-range parent, I had some good reasons to fight this policy. So I sent an email to the school board and the superintendent explaining my situation and asking that they be willing to consider my case. I kept digging around for the policy and couldn’t find it. I also sent him to school with the bike the following day. If there was no policy, they couldn’t really say no. Before I left work, I put in a call to the school board office. Bureaucrats have a tendency to drag their feet, so I wanted to speak to someone as quickly as possible (don’t worry, I wasn’t all panicked on the phone, I just wanted to talk to a human).

As I was making my commute to work I received a call from the principal. She was sorry but this was the district policy and it was her job to enforce it. I tried to explain my situation: but I ride with him and I don’t have a car, this is how we will get home together when I’m picking him up. And I would need her to show me the policy. She had quick responses: even if I rode with him, he couldn’t lock his bike on campus and ride home by himself and even if he didn’t ride home by himself, the bike could not be locked on school property. It is the policy. If I wanted to fight it, I could go to the school board (I don’t think she really expected me to do it).

I found myself feeling sorry for her, thinking that she was just an enforcer. The principal had no real power (or so it seems) to examine individual circumstances (I think mine were compelling) and make rare exceptions on a case-by-case basis. That evening the boy handed me the policy documentation, but somehow I knew this would work in my favor.

So today, I sent him with his bike anyway. And this afternoon, I got the call that the school board agreed to my request, granted the boy obeys the rules and I ride with him in the morning.

VICTORY!

I thanked the principal for working with me and told her to have a great weekend. When I picked the boy up, he did a little victory dance. I was relieved to have successfully bended the rules and not just because I had an abstract philosophical objection. It might not work for everyone, but for me, I feel like this saved my life.

* I have to admit that I’m not in favor of quite a few school policies. I think kids have way too much homework, uniforms take away their freedom of expression (yes I let my kids pick their own clothes), NCLB is not working, teachers have no creative freedom and the public school system is meant to socialize kids into being worker bee drones. I do a lot of reprogramming and deprogramming.

And I’m of two minds.

The first says that I’m not sympathetic to the idea of anyone killing themselves because they were bullied. Who hasn’t been other than the bully who was probably bullied by someone too. I was bullied, mocked and made fun of at various times during my schooling. I know what it’s like to be mortified and wishing you could hide from your tormentors. To feel like dread at the thought of going to school…And maybe with the “always on” culture we have, its harder to get away from the bully noise (but I don’t really buy that either).

Thing is that there have been bullies since the beginning of time and the bully is no more the cause of a suicide than a cardiac arrest is a cause of death. There are obviously bigger reasons here for Prince’s being suicidal; bullying perhaps the final stressor.

My other mind says that the bullies should definitely be held accountable for what they did. And so should the school admins who did nothing. They tell kids not to fight, have zero tolerance policies for the stupidest things and make every adult who graces the school campus for any length of time undergo a background check and then fail to protect them from a very real, internal threat.

It may not be a threat like being kidnapped, but bullying is hurtful and some cases (maybe Prince’s case was one such cases), bullying can be quite severe. It’s also no secret when it’s going on. Students and staff turn a blind eye and for meeker, more sensitive kids, the affects of bullying can be traumatizing.

I never told my mom I was being bullied. Maybe I was more resilient than others. Maybe mine wasn’t a severe case. But when The Boy told me there was a group of kids at his elementary school picking on him and he told me that the yard lady (as they call them) responded “it happens” I was a little irritated. If he had told me more than the little girl kicked him and they said things like “you think you’re cool” (all of which point to a schoolyard crush and/or jealous kids), I might have been more inclined to inquiring about more details. So I told the boy the girl probably thought he was cute and to kick her back next time.

That’s right. Kick her back. If you hit, you get hit back. And if the adults aren’t going to do anything, I think its more than fair for the kids to defend themselves within reason, and kicking a girl back after she’s kicked you every day for weeks, is definitely within reason.

The schools can’t have it both ways: don’t defend yourself but we won’t defend you either. Of course we don’t want them brawling every day, but kids also have to learn to work out their own schoolyard conflicts sometimes. It teaches them to protect themselves even if it means never actually having to fight anyone because they develop a sharp tongue and a quick wit (like I did ).

Learning to manage conflict also increases confidence. My eldest boy (The Kid) was pushed off of the monkey bars once. He hit his head really hard and had a stiff neck for a week or two. For a while he was afraid of the playground. He ate lunch in the classroom with his teacher and waited there to be picked up after school.

I told him that he had as much a right to play on the playground as that kid who pushed him and if he kept hiding he’d set a pattern of hiding and instead of facing his fear. About a week later I found The Kid playing out in the open. When I mentioned it, he grinned and told me he wasn’t worried about the bully anymore because he’d cornered him and beat him up. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be bothered again.

The Kid looked so proud and confident. He was holding his head up and smiling like I hadn’t seen him smile in a long time. In my mind I thought I should tell The Kid what he’d done was wrong. But he had gotten tired of hiding and faced down his bully the best way he knew how. And he wasn’t afraid anymore. Who was I to tell him that was wrong?

I guess I say all this to say that we all share responsibility and more severe cases: the parents, the teachers and school administrators, the classmates, the bullies and the kids being bullied.

Now, I wasn’t really worried someone would take him. Reading the Free-Range Kids Blog has taught me that such fear is rather irrational. But as the time ticked by and there was no sign of the boy, the irrational panic started to creep up on me anyway.

Shit, I thought, I only have two phone numbers and he at least four friends around the way. I was kind of uncomfortable about knocking on doors because, well, what if the other parents judged me for letting my kid roam around the neighborhood? Bed time was approaching at an alarming rate (probably because the boy was out WAY past dark) and I was starting to freak out. I called one friend, the one who was probably the least free-range, and of course, the boy wasn’t there because they didn’t allow visitors after 5 PM during the week. I had to try though.

As I started walking around the neighborhood, I realized that there were only two houses I knew for sure he might be. So I knocked on the other. There were two kids there who didn’t belong, neither of which was my boy. I went back home. There was no way I was just going to knock on random doors. To me, that meant panic and I was not going to panic.

I decided to walk around a little bit more trying to recognize some of the houses the boy had shown me. It was dark and I just couldn’t remember. I headed back to the house where his friends were (probably also well past curfew) to ask if they knew where the boy might be and just before I walked up to the door, I saw a little dark figure in an orange shirt across the street. So I called out.

“Um…” I said as he turned toward me. “Do you know how long it’s been dark?”

I walked up and introduced myself to the adult (and parent of the friend) standing outside with him.

“I asked him what his curfew was and he told me 9:00,” said the friend’s dad. “It sounded a little late to me, but we were about to have him call you and give him a ride home.”

I made sure to get the parent’s number and assured him that the boy was supposed to go home when it was dark. 8:30 was far too late, especially since it had been dark for more than an hour.

As the boy and I walked home, I chastised him about being out so late.

“But I was watching a movie,” he said.

“I don’t care. When are you supposed to come home?”

“When it’s dark.”

“It’s not that big a deal if you want to watch a movie and eat pizza,” I said. “But at the very least, you have to call me and let me know where you are.”

He took a bite of his pizza and acted like it wasn’t a big deal.

I stopped and made him look at me.

I explained that having the freedom to run around unsupervised was a big responsibility; one he shouldn’t take advantage of if he wanted to keep it. If he couldn’t be trusted to come home when he was supposed to come home, he’d be on lockdown indefinitely.

He raised an eyebrow at the idea of being “on lockdown.”

“That’s right,” I said. “If I can’t trust you, you can’t go anywhere.”

He hung his head and sighed. Then he looked up at me and said, “Ok, mommy. I’m sorry. I’ll be more responsible next time.”

We hugged it out and I made him go to bed early.

There were lots of kids, all of whom were pretty much given free reign to play anywhere in the complex. If any of them tried to venture out (as I’m sure some did), there were security guards at the gates to stop them.

But with two shoot outs and an impending rent increase, I decided it was time for me to go and set out to find a place between Long Beach and Irvine where I worked. I ended up finding this cute little place in Orange where there were lots of kids and families. It was a little suburban for my taste, but the school was good and my commute to work would be cut in half.

And I like the neighborhood for the most part. It’s been good so far. I had even gotten more comfortable with giving the boy a longer leash and letting him ride his scooter around, as long as he stayed away from the main road. He had made friends and knew to come in when it was dark.

Today though, things were terribly sullied.

The boy went out to ride his scooter as he often did when there was still light when we got home for the day. It was starting to get dark and I was watching the door for the boy to come bursting in. And he did…but without his scooter.

“Where’s your scooter?” I asked expecting him to tell me he had forgotten it at a friend’s house again.

“Someone took it,” he said.

“WHAT?!?” I was in shock.

“A kid just walked up and took it from me.”

“What kid? Do you know him? Have you seen him before?”

“I’ve seen him once, but I don’t know him.”

As I questioned him, the boy’s shoulders begin to slump and I could tell he was seriously hurt. Not physically mind you…but you know…someone had taken his shit right out of his hands!

“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

He told me how he was riding past one of his friend’s houses and this kid he didn’t really recognize came up behind him, punched him and told him, “Gimme your scooter bitch.”

“I tried to chase him and get it back but he was on my scooter and I ran out of breath.”

I couldn’t believe it.

That’s the kind of story you expect to hear when you live in the hood not when you’re in what you thought was a safe suburban family cul-de-sac. I sat there in shock for a few minutes before telling him I was sorry he had to go through that.

And he broke down.

“It really, really sucks,” he sobbed. “I really liked that scooter.”

I held him close, told him I knew and assured him he would get another.

“Just like that one?”

“I can’t promise you that honey.”

“But that was my favorite scooter ever.”

“I know honey, I know.”
Fuck. There are assholes everywhere.

I loved it and thought about how on the weekends and during full days of free time, I always send the boy outside with strict instructions not to return unless he’s hungry. If I didn’t do this, he’d sit in front of the TV or computer. That’s no way for a kid to grow up. Sure kids who use computers regularly have higher reading aptitudes, but too much computer time can lead to a sedentary lifestyle. That’s not what I want for my boy.

The thing is that with the paranoia about pedifiles and the safety police on high alert most of the time, it can be hard for free-rangers like myself to allow kids the freedom they need to be active. And if you can’t afford to (or simply don’t want to schedule every moment of your child’s activity) pay for extracurricular like t-ball and karate, finding active options can be difficult.

What we need to do is bring back that village mentality where parents in the same neighborhood knew each other and looked out for each other’s kids and kids were free to roam their respective neighborhoods without the parents being accused of being neglectful. I’m fortunate to live in an area where the kids (and parents) are given just this freedom. Sure the kids get into trouble sometimes, but mostly, they just play and respect the responsibility that comes with their long leashes.

So here’s to a return of parental and childhood freedom. And to the healthy lifestyle that is being a free-range kid.

It was a craptastic week. Stressing about money, ambush at work, injury from working out…I’m tired, cranky and I just want to isolate myself in my room. I want to lock the door and watch TV on the internet until I fall asleep.

Unfortunately, the boy has other ideas. He wants me to play and watch him dance and sing. He wants to sit with me and watch TV but I just want to be alone. I snapped at him a couple times because I tried to tell him politely. But really, its just me and him, so I totally understand why he just wants to sit under me.

I apologized for snapping and explained that I’m just in a bad mood and don’t want to be bothered. But kids never understand that. So when he came in and asked me for a hug and a kiss, I held him and told him that I loved him.

And my heart softened and swelled. Because no matter how mean I am to him, the boy loves his momma and just wants my love.

Nothing like unconditional love to make you forget that things suck. The boy’s love was like a warm blanket and he was wrapping me in it. And all is right with the world.

Damn I love that boy.

And I think I’ll keep him

Now I love the boy, but fuck if he isn’t jut a bundle of energy. All. The. Time. And that can be really exhausting after a long day at work when you have freelance projects to do and you have cook dinner and make sure write a blog post for the day…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining or anything (ok, I kinda am), but is it too much to ask that the kid not bounce all over the freaking house from the moment we walk through the door to the moment he goes to bed? It’s like he likes when I yell at him to stop bouncing all over the place!

On the weekends, I send him outside and tell him not to come back until he’s hungry, but during the week and with it getting dark so early, he doesn’t get much playtime between school and the YMCA. So I try to stay calm and remind him that flipping is not an indoor activity (Yeah. Flipping).

I know I’m not the only parent who longs for silence from time to time. I love the boy. Sometimes, I just don’t love the energy.