Most parents in my growing up years followed, without realizing they were doing so, the four research-driven suggestions for a play-based childhood.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers these suggestions for raising digital-ready kids in his recent book, “Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” But years before I read Haidt’s book, had done a military move or birthed a military child, the only thing I knew back in the summer of 2003 was that I desperately wanted to start a dog-washing business.
The place: our house in the Missouri Ozarks. Rolling hills, dogwoods, a neighborhood nestled alongside a nature preserve. Deer, wild turkeys, and kids free-ranged through yards of split-level homes. While simply trying to manage enough quiet to make a few phone calls at the end of the day, my parents (along with most parents of the time) managed to follow Haidt’s first suggestion: “More unsupervised play and childhood independence.” For us, that took the form of dirt piles and scooter races.
But it translated indoors, too. Only the family computer in the living room was connected to the internet. I had access to the old, leftover computer in my own room with no internet and only basic word processors.
To jumpstart “Wag, Walk & Wash,” my proposed dog-washing business, I needed a logo. While meticulously piecing together Microsoft Word letters, circles, squares, and rectangles into a motley, perky dog, I experienced the benefit of Haidt’s next suggestion: “No smartphones before high school.” In classic millennial fashion, non-scrolling-related computer activities provided tools to experiment, create, and test out ideas.
Putting my sales skills through the wringer, I next traversed the houses along our giant hill, clad in an iron-on logo T-shirt, with homemade flyers and our wagon for transporting pups. My older sister came at my parents’ request and we rang doorbells. “No, thank you,” we heard over and over again. My sister remained determined on my behalf. But the dog printed on my shirt drooped.
We had one final house, that of a schoolmate. I swiveled back around when the mom said, “Yeah, sure. You can wash our dog.” The thrill of meeting our inaugural canine quickly flipped, however, when my eyes rested on a rather old and sad-looking poodle.
The poodle tottered home in our red Radio Flyer wagon. I soon discovered she was warty, too. Still, cringing but determined, I finished the wash, holding her out at arm’s length to gently place her — fresh and clean, as promised — back in her four-wheeled carriage. She gazed glassy-eyed at the sunlit surroundings on her ride home. The mom handed me a crisp $5 bill, which I tucked into my pocket with a smirk of satisfaction. I parked the wagon back in the garage and stashed the rest of my flyers. Old poodles weren’t the customers I had envisioned.
With a pitiful arc to the rise and fall of my hopeful enterprise, looking back, I’m thankful my parents and community (by virtue of it being 2003) inadvertently followed the final two suggestions: “Phone-free schools” and “No social media before 16.” (Well, I got a desktop Facebook at 14.) My idea “failed,” but no one outside my family knew. And I still got $5.
An advocate for child protection, responsibility, and independence, Haidt writes, “Our kids can do so much more than we let them. Our culture of fear has kept this truth from us. They are like racehorses stuck in the stable. It’s time to let them out.”
Haidt points out that giving kids more independence in the real world works better when communities work together to make it happen. Though you might be a fresh face on your street, other military families stare down similar challenges: All military kids need safe, positive ways to engage with a real-world, trusted community.
At the start of this school year, why not start a conversation with a neighbor, school group, or friend to brainstorm ways to help your kids cultivate more independence — together? And why not brainstorm with your children (or nieces and nephews with parent permission) about ways you might support them in giving back or taking on new challenges in the real world?
Maybe it won’t be a dog-washing business. But it will be something.
Only time — and the freedom to try — will tell what they might tackle next.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Back to School” August 2024 e-edition here.
