In our culture, we are told, we crave to be young, or, at least, look ten or so years younger than the birth certificate indicates. Hmm. (That’s the sound of this writer’s doubts, reverberating, lilting at the end, with a smidgen of irony. The cat approves of this momentous noise issuing from the kibble-giver, but he’s also half asleep.)
Be young. Be young. Hmm.
There’s a sort of amnesia or emotional calcification that’s taken place. For me, the manufacturing of a childhood is linked with social isolation and disdain for others. Childhood has become a romanticized commodity, especially for the middle and upper classes, as if every kid has to experience what Mom and Dad wish they’d had. Kids don’t have to wait for new, shiny stuff, or earn the money; they are princes and princesses in the making. They possess the latest gear and gadgets, and they are already bored, looking forward to nothing. And many families (although it’s not the majority, I hope) act as if every public area is their private living room.
But here’s the thing about childhood: kids live in a constant state of vulnerability. That’s part of what makes them interesting to write about and for. They are told what to do, where to go, what they should be, how to feel–and those kids are often the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are neglected or preyed upon, and have no childhood at all: they’ve never felt safe.
Kids grapple with intense emotions and situations for the first time. It’s not easy to deal with pain as an adult – remember what it was like the first time you faced rejection, failure, or grief? I’m not talking about overdone, eye-rolling, Facebooking angst. I mean real young people confronting real pain. Yeah, you remember. But can you feel it, still, or is it just an echo and a thought?
Is helicopter parenting and schooling is a denial of this emotional reality? This St. Louis school has decided that best friends are bad – because someone’s feelings might get hurt. In other words, since a heart can be wounded, stick it in a padded room and feed it baby food to protect it. Make friendship a generic brand.
I have been trying to forgive this school, and its staff, for gross stupidity. It can’t be easy to be in their shoes. I imagine that they deal with a barrage of complaints: parents who see mistreatment or want favors; kids who ask for intervention in conflicts; proof of peer cruelty with text messages and posts, there for all to read and cluck over. Navigating that clutter must be maddening. But telling kids not to care too much about a special person, a best friend, is a poisonous and sick solution. Losing a best friend is a wrenching experience, especially when it occurs through rejection or group conflict. Not ever having experienced that friendship is far worse.
If you follow this school’s logic, we should all stop falling in love and getting married. Marriage leads to divorce half the time, right? Let’s separate the genders, meet for impersonal breeding, and call it good. Now that sounds enriching.
If this “no best friend” philosophy had been around when I was growing up, I can hear my mother, perhaps, agreeing with it and telling me to “branch out” and have more friends. I didn’t have a rosy childhood, but I am eternally grateful that I had so much freedom in comparison to kids today. I walked to school by myself, from kindergarten on. I loved that day-dreamy time, that private space between school and home. I rode my bike for miles. I had best friends. I lost best friends, and rarely was I willing to let them go. But those people were emotional milestones that I would never give up now, even for a less painful experience. It’s the creative wellspring for writers and illustrators for children.
To parents, to school staff, I say this: you cannot protect them from everything. You cannot soften every blow. What you can do, is to react well when the blows fall. Don’t dismiss the pain. Don’t assume that it’s forgotten. Don’t judge. Demonstrate your loyalty if needed, if the danger to them is too great, and end the situation after it happens. Then the true work begins. Teach coping skills so that kids may survive and even thrive after a difficult time. You talk, you sympathize, you heal. And grow. That’s how babes become warriors.
Which returns us to the small role that stories play in this life drama. Reading stories is training wheels for the heart. If you make literature too safe, too bland, too innocuous, then you have taken away both safety and comfort in the process of learning to cope with life. Unfortunately, many adults have decided that the bicycle itself is too dangerous as well. Lock up discovery. Chain new experiences. Never leave home.
