Back when I was your age...

Now and then my kids like to be regaled with stories from my childhood. They gasp at what they consider my “backwards” youth and I feel like a dinosaur, but its good family fun so I indulge them.

To their disbelief, there was once a time when people didn’t have to wear seatbelts. If this weren’t shocking enough to them, I include that when my mom drove our station wagon, she would fold down the back seat and my brothers and I would just free float around back there. If we wanted our window down we had to roll it manually, which was preferable because she and just about every other adult smoked – in the car, at home, in restaurants, while pregnant. We ingested as much second hand smoke as our beloved Jiffy Pop popcorn.

Speaking of cars, our “minivan” was the classic variety with big square picture windows, curtains, a table in the back and a little frig. There was no built in DVD player though, so car trip entertainment was limited to cards, books, license plate bingo and tormenting siblings by drawing an imaginary line they couldn’t cross (some pleasures stand the test of time.)

Our phones were attached to the wall with a long curly cord and the privacy of a conversation was limited to how far the cord could stretch around the corner. No caller ID and no answering machine made avoiding people you didn’t want to talk to impossible. Our cameras required film which you had to drop off at the Kodak photo hut in town. It was always a mystery what your pictures might turn out like since you couldn’t see them instantly, which made getting them back (a week later) kind of exciting.

No microwaves meant Mom had to wait for the oven to heat up or water to boil to make dinner – which we all ate together. Whole families often shared one bathroom. Only kids with really crooked teeth got braces. Nobody wore a helmet when they rode a bike, cartoons could only be watched on Saturday morning and nothing was open on Sunday. 

These conversations are always a source of surprise and fascination for my kids – and remind me how different their own day to day life is. Of course, grandparents’ stories are even more entertaining, which usually follow a theme like walking barefoot in the snow to get to and from school (uphill both ways.)

I wonder what stories my kids will tell about their youth to amaze their children. It will be fun to hear their perspective. For now, my daughter’s shock when I tell her I got paid one dollar an hour to babysit is enough amusement for me.

Column originally appears in Current in Fishers http://currentinfishers.com/

What's good about bad role models

If your kids’ childhood is anything like my kids’, it’s pretty nice. Nice schools, nice neighbors, nice friends, nice family . . . their world has been carefully designed and monitored by me and my husband to be as good as possible (as it should be.) But now and again a rogue influence arrives in an unexpected package – a bad adult role model.

I’m not talking about something as horrible as a child abuser or predator here, just your garden variety bad example for being a grown-up. It can be quite a shock when your child has his or her first experience with one. After all, as good parents we try to manipulate our children’s world to include as many good role models as we can. The vast majority of adults my kids have come in contact with in our area (at school, in camps, in stores, pretty much everywhere) have been so consistently pleasant, friendly and helpful to children as to be an invisible (but expected) backdrop in their lives. Sure, kids deal with other kids who are not always nice, but when they unexpectedly experience an adult who is thoughtless, rude, selfish or mean, their universe gets a little rocked. 

Our first instinct is to remove this particular offender from our child’s life, which is often the best reaction. But with some issues, and when children reach a certain maturity level, the example a bad role model provides can be quite educational. How do people react to this person? How are they regarded? What effect might this have on their daily life? We can talk about these life lessons hypothetically until we’re blue in the face, but to see a living, breathing example of what not to do can be much more powerful.

Of course, we want to teach compassion and tolerance for difficult people. We can’t always know why anyone acts the way they do. The reality, however, is that not all adults turn out well. Those who routinely act poorly don’t deserve a free pass just because of their grown up status. If we make excuses for their bad behavior because it’s uncomfortable to address or easier to gloss over, we tell our kids that what we consider important now – kindness, fairness, patience, etc. - can be considered negotiable when they’re older.

Bus drivers, teachers, coaches, relatives -  lots of adults float in and out of our kids’ lives, and not all of them are great. But bad role models can serve a purpose, too. They’re part of the “real world” that we’re sending our kids into and they can provide valuable vicarious lessons if we let them. 

Column originally appears in Current in Fishers http://currentinfishers.com/