On my way back from Idylwilde today, I passed our neighbors’ house and said hi to the kids. 

“How’s the yard sale going?”  I asked the three boys.

“Great!”  then, “Hey, Abby!  I can tie my shoes!!!!”

“That’s awesome!” I said, then their mom and I talked about their new cat for a minute before I went my way.

I’ve been thinking about these kids lately, and how they are raised the way I was raised:  they play outside a lot, often with other neighborhood kids; they aren’t scheduled for a million lessons, but rather have a lot of free play time; and their parents don’t treat them as though they’re little gods.  These kids have boundaries, and they know when they’ve crossed the line.

The result is that these kids are well-behaved, friendly, and know how to entertain themselves simply by riding their bikes or picking beans and tomatoes out of their garden.  They’re also interested in other people: they’ve brought us a plate of homemade brownies, and they always come running over to greet Jim when he grills, asking him, “Hey, Jim!  Whatcha doin’???  Are you going to play guitar??  Whatcha cookin’???”

It’s really refreshing to see a family that’s raising such sweet, fun, un-selfcentered boys, especially in this age of over-scheduled children and helicopter parents.  It seems like every time I turn on the Today Show there’s a piece on how parents overindulge their children these days, and how current parenting practices aren’t ideal, that maybe we’ve swung too far away from how parents raised children in the fifties, that parenting needs to swing back to a more moderate point somewhere between where we are now and where we were in the fifties.  I suspect that the economic downturn will actually encourage more parenting like I see next door, as more families can’t afford to pay for classes and lessons for their children, and as more families want to raise kids who will be able to take the blows that society is bound to deal them in the coming years. Things have changed a lot in the last year, and our kids need to be equipped for what looks to be a hard-scrabble future.

And now Jim and I should head over and meet that new cat…