Category: Columns

Weekday morning, early summer, my kids are playing outside. Not in the backyard. Not in our enclosed, danger-proof, visible-from-every-window backyard.

They’re cavorting out front. Where there are driveways, blind corners, and a teenaged neighbor with a Pontiac and a lead foot. Where there may be oleander. Or vicious dogs. Or a gun-toting, candy-dangling, meth-addled pedophile.

Maybe not. But from where I sit at this computer, I can’t see my kids. And though it makes me sound deranged, I admit this simple scenario puts me on edge. It fans a smoldering lump of fear deep in my gut. As they explore the world beyond our porch, their voices grow fainter, and the voice in my head grows louder: “Lady, you ain’t doing your job.”

Am I insane? Yes. Also no.

Journalist Lenore Skenazy says such parental paranoia is the common and natural result of sensationalistic media reports on ghastly kidnappings, gruesome murders, and freak accidents — all of which make society seem far more dangerous than it actually is. Her book Free-Range Kids argues that Americans have become so unnecessarily fearful for our children’s safety (kneepads for crawling babies? helmets for wobbly toddlers?) that we suck all the joy out of both parenthood and childhood.

When I was born, the doctor misspoke. “It’s a bo… ,” he told my parents, “a girl!” I work hard to avoid pondering what it is the guy thought he saw. My dad was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment. “It only lasted a split second,” he assures me. “And I probably wouldn’t have felt it at all except for Dr. Slip.”

I don’t begrudge him his momentary grudge. As the mother of boys, I know that being a yin and begetting a yang can make a parent uneasy. My boys like to beat on things, jump off stuff, and generally behave in confounding ways. And when I shepherd my three-year-old to the bathroom at 2 a.m., I’m ill-skilled to help him aim. Or shake. You might as well ask me to repair a blown head gasket.

Thus do I feel a certain kinship to the fathers of daughters. Girls are complicated, and raising them is tricky — especially when your model for “father” is the fella who taught you to throw a long bomb and “take it like a man.”

I know a guy who cursed when he found out his wife was pregnant with a girl. “I remember distinctly yelling ‘#@$%!’ in the muffled cone of silence my car offered,” he said. “At the time, it was just one more thing that I felt was not going my way. I would come to the realization years later that it’s your child’s personality you fall in love with, and it’s irrelevant what that personality is attached to.”

Okay, class, time for a math quiz.

Take your child’s attitude. Multiply it by 24 students. Subtract 11 weeks of summer vacation, but add $5.3 billion in education budget cuts.

That’s what our kids’ teachers cope with daily, from the second their coffee kicks in to the moment the blessed bell rings at 3 o’clock. And we parents are grateful, of course we are. As the school year ends, though, it’s hard to know how to express that gratitude. Or, frankly, how to wrap it.

Some families bake cookies to show thanks. Others give potted plants, scented candles, or handmade greeting cards. I’ve heard of parents bestowing teachers with cashmere robes, Tiffany necklaces, and even $300 cash.

“Are we supposed to be supplementing their income because they are ridiculously underpaid?” asked a mother I know, whose confusion echoes my own. “Or is it purely a token of appreciation, in which case, should it come from the child or the parent?”

So I did what I’d be too ashamed to do without the defensible guise of “column research.” I asked teachers what they really want. And some of their answers surprised me.

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