I’m no one’s lap dog, you can’t put me on a leash.
-Johnny Rotten
I saw a lady with her son the other day. They were walking near a road, and when the boy so much as stepped off the sidewalk onto the grass nearest the road, she yelled at him that if he wouldn’t listen and stay with her, he would have to hold her hand. It got me thinking, and kind of sad, because Meredith loves to hold my hand. It’s not a punishment or a threat. If she’s heading in a direction I’m not sure I want her to head, all I normally have to do is call her name and hold out my hand, and she will either come running towards me or at least stop so I can go to her. I tell her why we can’t go in the direction she wants, and she will toddle along next to me (or behind or in front) in a new direction. I hope she never starts to see holding my hand as a bad thing. I don’t expect her to stick like glue to my side either.
I see so many parents lately walking around with their kids on leashes. I can understand the thinking that might cause a parent to start to use one (not that I necessarily agree with the thinking or would use one myself, and Kris thinks they’re mostly just a tool so parents don’t have to pay as much attention to their children), but too often they’re used solely as a method of control. We were at the Saanich Fair the other day and one mom was actually tugging her kid around like he was a dog or something. In The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff discusses how in other cultures, parents are surprised when they hear that parents in North America have problems with their kids running off. One of her theories about why that is is that so many kids are born and then whisked away to be weighed and measured, or for “observation”. It is a well-known fact that most other mammals and birds have a crucial period right after birth in which imprinting takes place, and if the baby is not with his or her mom it won’t happen. In other cultures, where the baby is kept with mom and breastfeeding is initiated soon after birth, the parents trust that their kids are following along behind like baby geese.
I don’t think that that is necessarily possible here, especially in a crowded area where you might be worried about someone grabbing your child, but it is other people around me I don’t trust, not my child. At the same fair, Kris and I wanted to sit down in the shade. Meredith wanted to wander. My first instinct was to try and encourage her to sit with us, but we decided to let her wander around a bit, since it was very quiet where we were. We shouldn’t have even worried. She didn’t go more than 5 or 10 feet from us. She didn’t try to take off and lose herself in the crowd or anything. She stayed close, examined rocks and grass, and when we were ready to get up and go somewhere else she came right over to us. A little bit of trust goes a long way. Obviously all kids are different and some will be more comfortable going further at a younger age, but even then, I think we need to recognize that it’s not the kids that shouldn’t be trusted, but the world at large. When we start putting our kids on leashes (real or metaphorical), we are telling them we don’t trust them, and I believe that starts a self-perpetuating circle where the kid does what we don’t want him to do because we expect he will do it (and kids do want to meet our expectations), which lowers our trust more, and so on.
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