Are we making things too perfect for our kids?
The other day I read a story about a child who was running on the pool deck at the local swimming area. The lifeguard told the child to walk, as to be expected around a big hole of water. But what happened next was shocking. The dad went up to the lifeguard and told him to not tell his child what to do, he (the dad) would decide what the child was and was not allowed to do.
Now, I know this is not every parent and I also know that everyone has their own parenting styles. I am not one to judge. The part of this that irked me most was they were in a public area where there was a trained professional, whose sole job it is to keep everyone as safe as possible and minimize risks. That lifeguard was just doing his job, and couldn’t dad see and respect the fact that it is not safe for a child to be running around a pool. Not to mention, if you are at a public pool you need to follow its rules.
Regardless, I think this situation was an example of a larger problem in parenting these days. We are afraid to step on each other’s toes, to parent each other’s children. I agree that there are right times and wrong times for intervention. But when it comes to the greater good of all the children involved it should be understood. If my child hit another child, and I missed it, I would respect another parent telling my child that was not nice and then coming to tell me the situation so I could take it from there.
How are we preparing our kids for the real world if they are only supposed to take direction from us? We won’t be around forever, and we definitely are not involved in every single situation as our children are. Don’t we want to teach them to respect authority, within reason (obviously)? We do, of course, want to teach our kids what boundaries are and when an adult might be crossing those boundaries. But, we also want them to understand there are rules in the world that need to be followed. We do not steal. We do not hurt another. And, it might not be a good idea to run at the pool.
