The Growing Season

It’s dark now; the day over for most, ending for many, another set to arrive before we’re ready.  Chance of showers overnight, they say, fingers crossed we don’t find ourselves in the presence of another of those glorious spring storms like we did last Friday evening – the kind where the skies grow eerily quiet and still, then suddenly erupt in a rage of wind and downpour.  The kind that wash away hours of hard work and carefully planted lawn seed and deposit both in the gutter at the end of the driveway and down the street.

But that’s how it works.  You get a beautifully hot, summer day over May long-weekend and you’re liable to pay for it with a thunderstorm – nature’s way of keeping the balance.  Mother Nature also likes to remind you of how short your memory is too, especially on those too-early, hot, summer days that arrive in May and you forget to consider sunscreen while you’re raking and seeding your renewed front lawn…

We know better.  And Mother Nature knows we know better too – that’s why she keeps throwing those same lessons at us over and over and over again.  She’s just proving a point.

School’s beginning to end for many of my friends to the south, though our kids still have a month and a bit left on their sentences before the educational warden grants them parole.  It’s the season of outdoor education now, with field days and track meets and trips to the park for the youngest ones, for dancing and fun in the warm weather.  The grade 8 classes are planning their ‘graduation’ farewells before leaving middle school behind for good and entering the hallways of high school for the first time this fall.

Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t understand the pomp and ceremony of moving from one grade into another – this is how it is supposed to work kids.  You don’t need a dinner and dance and grad photos to mark the occasion – you save that for the end of high school when many will exit the halls of education never to return, and those that choose to continue their pursuit of knowledge will find themselves thrust into a world for which they may not be prepared.   This is just the end of the eighth grade; four more to go until you’ve accomplished something. 

But still, there they are, the 13 and 14 year olds, too young to be adults, and too old to be kids, yet wanting both at the same time.  The girls have chosen their gowns and corsages, hoping, longing, needing to be asked to the dance by the cute object of their wistful affection; he’s oblivious to them of course, a pack animal coming into his own, surrounded by a gang of similar-minded, young man-boys, their thoughts alternating constantly between music, video games, sports and girls, caught in a dizzying whirl of adolescent inattention.  All of them squarely in the sights of life’s best and worst times.

But we’ve made them this way, all of us: parents and teachers and the media and society in general.  We’ve coddled them, given them false hopes and empty, hollow promises when what they needed to learn were some harsh, hard realities.  The real world doesn’t reward mediocrity, it’s an unfair collection of lessons and suffering, survived by those that can ride the waves and chart a course despite the storms and bad weather.  It offers riches and joy and prosperity to those willing to seek them – in whatever form they take – but it just doesn’t hand them over because you managed to stumble across them.  Hard work and doing what is required to get the job done aren’t necessarily for the faint of heart, but they shouldn’t be shied away from or looked down upon, and they certainly shouldn’t be concepts foreign to our children, lest we want to keep housing them and feeding them until they turn forty…

Kids aren’t stupid, they understand the game of life, and they play a mean hand when forced.  The trouble is not enough of us are forcing them to play those hands.  Lavish celebrations for passing grade 8? Please. I’m surprised we aren’t paying them for test scores.  I understand wanting to celebrate the end of that portion of your school life but let’s keep things in perspective, shall we?  Why do we feel the need to rush the adult world on them?  I know they want to become a part of that world as quickly as they can, God knows the media thrives on feeding them images and stereotypes of adult needs and wants and desires, but that’s no excuse. 

As parents we want to keep our children safe and free from harm and pain if we can – that’s the job and responsibility we signed up for.  But we were also charged with shaping them into productive members of society, who will be able to think and act for themselves, guided by principles of fairness and empathy, respect and responsibility.  And part of that guidance means letting them fall every now and then so they can learn to get back up on their own.  We do it when we teach them to ride a bicycle – we don’t wrap them in bubble wrap and pillows and send them off to wobble down the street without training wheels – no, we watch their progress and remove those wheels when they demonstrate the right amount of skill and aptitude, then run along side guiding the seat, providing just enough trust and encouragement to keep them pedaling forward, and then we slowly let go…

They will fall.  They may get hurt.  But they will learn to ride.  And they will be successful at it.  It’s the same with life.  Kids need to fall, they need to get hurt, and they need to learn from their mistakes.  But they need those things in a constructive framework that supports their growth and development, from everyone who has a share at stake in their final outcome – parents, teachers, society at large, all of us.

Don’t sweet-talk your child – they can see right through that, and they will take advantage of it and ride that wave as long as it keeps cresting.  And the further they float down stream, the harder it becomes to pull them back to this side of shore.  Don’t pander to them in the name of safety and dangerous, scary worlds – that’s fear based guidance and it has never developed anything except more fear.  You reap what you sow.  So why not sow some kindness and attention and respect and honesty.  You owe them at much.

Sometimes you may have to scrape those seeds off the neighbor’s driveway and put them back where they belong, where they can grow into healthy, strong, shoots, under your watchful, caring eyes.  Is it the easy way? Hell no.  But it’s doing what is required to get the job done.  Enjoy the grade eight graduation dinners and dances, celebrate the fact that your children are growing up, but let’s not forget the lessons we’ve known all along, though we seem to keep forgetting again and again. 

Nature loves balance; kids need to fall, and I need to remember sunscreen.