Free Range Parenting in my 'Hood

A fellow parent at the elementary school our kids go to/have gone to is quoted extensively in the article below, which continues the ongoing discussion of free range kids and free range parenting.  I believe in free range parenting, but I have a different name for it: parenting.

Picture Post: Birthday Boys

Really, I just wanted to make a picture post celebrating the boys' birthdays, but then while hosting our second party in as many weeks at one of these family fun centers - bowling, laser tag, arcade, teenagers apparently in charge - I noticed something. Parties at this place essentially consist of a series of feats of strength. Nobody's good at bowling, and that goes double for today's 8- and 12-year-old boys. So the party starts with boys hurling balls down bumper-aided lanes with no form at all to usually-unsatisfying results. The rare spare legitimately causes a huge celebration. Then it's on to just-better-than-school-quality pizza and pitchers of soda. That's the training table for laser tag. Because Charlie's group was shy of the mandatory minimum size for our party package, I played laser tag with the boys. Running around in the dark with a gun that ceases working for four extremely-long seconds after you've been shot is nothing short of terrifying and shattering. I now know what those guys felt like coming back from 'Nam. Finally, after the cake and presents ritual (a subtle competition in its own right at a friend party), it's on to the arcade with little baggies of tokens. Here, different priorities can be pursued, but the ticket-acquisition priority has also produces clear winners and losers. Some kids end up with paltry little stacks, while other kids struggle to manage unruly anacondas of tickets. Of course, virtually every single item one can acquire with those tickets is garbage that no parent wants to enter the house. Happy Your Friend's Birthday! My kids seem to enjoy these parties, but I wonder what psychological damage they inflict. 

For the record, Charlie invited four girls.  Unforch, none of them could attend.

Analysis aside, look how much fun everyone had!

Paige made a marble cake.  She writes more neatly with frosting than I write with a pen.	Charlie liked it.
Here comes a 7 with an impossible split.	Bumper violence on its way.
I didn't want to post photos of the boys' friends (because their parents didn't sign photo releases), but suffice it to say, they're nerds.  Their bowling names are things like as many digits of Pi as could fit and Doctor Who references.
Pride builds quality.  Quality builds pride.	Decorating in situ.
World Cup Fever!	Teddy requested red velvet cake.
Potential energy.	Kinetic energy.
Li'l Storm Trooper	Engage phasers!

An Everyday

An Everyday

a prose poem
November 2013

Almost as soon as I get into the 
night-lit bathroom on Saturday,
I hear the smallest knock one hears
in our house.

After my "Come in." (compliant
like his mother was as a child), he
enters, his hair a true sculptural 
artifact of sleep.  He never sleeps in long.

Running the hot water for my 
shave, I watch him paste up his toothbrush.
Rather than "Good morning", he says
"I need cold."

Sighing, I switch from
hot to cold for him.

Just like I do, he sticks the pad
of his pinkie into the stream to
see if it's cooled to his liking.

Then it's back to hot for my shave.
And we're standing side by side
Y shaving, 1/2Y brushing.

When I thought about being a
father, I thought about feeding
and clothing, looking out for health,
teaching children right from wrong
and how the world works.

I didn't think much about
shaving cream and toothpaste
squeezed out simultaneously.
I didn't contemplate
competing demands for hot and cold water.

I didn't reckon with
a roommate thirty years my junior
sharing the sink.

While I help them learn how to live,
I also live with them.

And the lack of these 
moments will make me miss
them when they have new roommates
in East Lansing or Lewisburg.

Quiet dinners and clean, orderly rooms
will make me miss them.
Already, when they're gone for just
a day, their mother and I mock-remind
each other of chores to do.
They are not there to remind.
How will we handle it when they're
not coming back to share our
space
anymore?

Teddy's first contract

Our boys have always played together a lot.  We credit Charlie's kindness as a big brother a good deal for that.  He really loves Teddy, and he gives him time.  We've sometimes lamented that Teddy has skipped some of the kinds of play he might have engaged in at a given stage because he wanted to "play up" to the level  at which Charlie was playing.

They still do play together a lot, but the demands of middle school can really tax Charlie's availability.  It can be hard to say whether he still wants to play with Teddy the same amount but has too much of his time consumed by schoolwork and practicing his trumpet or whether he's starting to pull away from their tight playmate relationship.  He often wants to read when Teddy wants to play.  When Teddy complained to Charlie on a recent morning that Charlie always says in the morning he'll play with Teddy after school but then never does, I didn't want to hear the whining anymore.  I suggested to Teddy that he get a piece of paper and write down what Charlie said he would do and then have Charlie sign it.  Our home's general counsel was already on her way to work, so she couldn't review the document, but to my amateur eye, this looks like Teddy's first contract.

"You said you would play with me this afternoon"

It's simple and to the point - written in Teddy's own (downsloping) hand and signed by Charlie.  That signature might not hold up as evidence in a civil case, but an attorney must crawl before he can walk.

As it turns out, Charlie breached this contract.  He took an especially long time doing his homework that day, and the afternoon evaporated with no sibling play.  Teddy pointed this out to him.  Much like arguing with the referees in a sporting event, it won him nothing at the time.  On a later occasion in the week, however, a reminder of this welshing served as a guilt lever, and Charlie put down his book and went and played with little bro.  The argument that ensued over what they would play and in what order pointed out why contracts get very long and detailed.  LSAT prep begins soon, no doubt.

How I know my son likes his camp counselor

Charlie's cabin, with counselor Ben

So, we dropped Charlie off for camp on Sunday, and we pick him up tomorrow.  It's his first trip to sleepaway camp, and we're grateful for the eCamp service that does two things.  We can send him emails that get printed and distributed at mail call, and the camp posts photos of each days activities.  Comb through several hundred photos of several hundred kids, and you can ID yours to get proof that he/she is still alive.

We met Charlie's counselor, Ben, when we dropped him off and signed him in.  I felt a surprising surge of anxious emotion when we actually hugged the boy goodbye and walked to the parking lot.  After all, we believe we can trust this Christian camp to treat him well, but we don't really know anyone there.  We weren't able to arrange for him to go during a week when he has a buddy there.  And I never had to go to camp alone; my twin brother was always in my cabin (for good and ill).  When I saw Charlie in a picture from late in his camp week, I felt reassured that he at least likes his counselor.  I deduce that from the fact that when we met Ben, he had his baseball cap on backwards.  In every photo we've seen of Ben, he has his cap on backwards.  He may not be aware that a hat can be worn with the bill in the front.  When I spied Charlie playing a big group game, his cap was backwards.  I can't remember the last time I saw him wearing his cap backwards at home.  He clearly wants to emulate the recent college graduate who herds him and his cabin-mates around.  I hope that means he's a good guy who's made Charlie - a new kid - feel at home.

Offense wins games.  Defense wins championships.

Of course, Charlie feels at home just about everywhere, which is one thing that makes him an awesome kid.  We didn't deeply fear that he would have a bad week.  It's very likely that he's made lots of new friends and thrown himself in whole hog.  My apprehension at leaving him, though, derived not just from thinking about his phyiscal safety far from home.   He's headed into fifth grade, and children aren't necessarily nice people.  Would he - a game, intense, skinny kid with glasses and a short haircut - fit in with the under-armor-sporting, flat-brim hat, Bieber-haircut suburban kids who are clearly the cool crew at this camp?  Has he finally gotten to an age where being eager and sensitive and warm will enable his feelings to get hurt more?  Middle school looms.

One final note in what has become a long dispatch from a first-time sleepaway camp parent: Teddy has reacted to Charlie's absence in a variety of ways.  He envied Charlie going to camp when he wasn't.  He has grieved the lack of his consistent playmate.  At the same time, he has relished being able to choose how to play both by himself and with the babysitter and his parents.  He has enjoyed choosing what to play on the Wii without his bossy brother dictating terms.  Bedtime has bewitched a few times.  One night, he came out crying after getting into bed.  He couldn't fall asleep without Charlie there; they've shared a room his whole life.  I asked him if he wanted to email Charlie, and he said yes (thanks, eCamp!).  Through tears, he dictated, and I typed.  When he bawled "I want you.", I said that people usually say "I miss you."  He agreed to that edit.  "What else?", I asked.  "I hope you're having a good time." he said, which I found to be a very loving thing to say, even if it is formulaic.  "What else?"  "That's it."  He went off to bed.  Their reunion tomorrow should be very interesting.  I wonder if Teddy will start wearing his hat backwards.

Warmup Exercise

We just assembled the pile of stuff to pack for Charlie's first week at sleepaway camp.  Why does it feel like tomorrow we'll be assembling a much larger pile for his departure for college?