By Jake Vest

Since Dr. Spock came along, thousands of experts have told people who have children how to act like parents.   

As a teacher, I got to see a lot of the results of this advice. As I child I got a firsthand look at how it used to be done. It makes me wonder sometimes if parenting isn’t sort of like public education: A system that is constantly improving without ever getting any better. 

Looking back, it is hard to decide whether to be proud of or embarrassed by the way things were. You’ve probably seen those postings on social media – older folks saying, “kids in my day didn’t wear bike helmets… we lived on peanut butter, climbed trees, laughed at bee stings, hitchhiked, carried knives, had regular fistfights, and never sought medical attention for anything short of a broken bone.” 

All this was true for me but didn’t go anywhere near far enough. My parents had seven children, two jobs and a garden to look after – about average for a rural community. Our play consisted of getting out of their way and getting into whatever we could find to get into. 

Gasoline was sold in cans, which were casually discarded with a little left in the bottom. I know for a fact that if you put a match into one of those cans it will blow up. I also know that eyebrows will grow back.  

We built “cabins,” using saws, axes, hammers and rusty nails. It was a rite of passage to “walk the trestle,” crossing the river on a railroad bridge still used by trains. We camped out in thunderstorms, played baseball at the edge of limestone quarries with sheer drop-offs, built unsupervised bonfires and threw rocks at other groups of kids.  

None of this was “allowed,” but none of it was particularly prevented, either. Parenting consisted in large part of sending kids away in the morning, then seeing how many returned for supper and assessing what condition they were in – whether the activities of the day called for bandaging or beating. 

There is no doubt that attitudes have changed. But does that necessarily mean today’s parents have better judgment? 

While running recently, an almost silent shadow nearly knocked me off the sidewalk.  A kid of maybe 12 or 13 whooshed by on a vehicle right out of science fiction – a motorized skateboard with one big wheel in the middle. 

If there was a head under that hoodie it was not visible to the world, leading me to believe not much of that world was visible to the person in the hoodie. That wouldn’t matter a lot because he was entirely focused on a phone being held about 3 inches from where a face probably was. I cringed as I watched him shoot past a stop sign that is regularly ignored by drivers also focused on phones.  

At the bottom of the hill, he veered onto the public road and proceeded down the middle of it apparently oblivious to traffic ignoring the speed limit.  

Some adult, most likely a parent, bought that machine and gave that kid access to it. How he was using it might not have been allowed, but it sure wasn’t being prevented or supervised.  

Now, you can be as critical of the parents of my time as you want to be and much of that would be valid. But even they had better sense than to put motorized vehicles into the hands of kids not old enough to grow acne.  

On the other hand, they did sometimes let us drive the tractor.  

So, let’s call it a draw.